BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and 16 other state attorneys general last week withdrew from portions of a 2024 lawsuit challenging a Biden administration rule that classified gender dysphoria under federal disability law.
Marshall said the withdrawal followed the Trump administration’s December proposal to reverse the rule and remove gender dysphoria from the list of protected conditions. Marshall and 22 other state attorneys general formally supported it in comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 20.
“I applaud President Trump and his administration for working to remove woke ideology from HHS regulations,” Marshall said in a news release Monday. “The Biden administration’s attempt to require states to pay for sex-change procedures or risk losing federal funding was unlawful and would have hurt the very individuals Congress sought to help when it enacted the Rehabilitation Act.”
Eighteen other states, led by attorneys general from Maryland and California, submitted opposing comments urging the administration not to remove the gender dysphoria classification, warning the change could weaken civil rights protections for people with disabilities.
The original lawsuit challenging the inclusion of gender dysphoria as a disability raised alarm among disability advocates, who focused on what plaintiffs wanted the court to do to fix the issue: “declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. section 794, unconstitutional” and to permanently enjoin its enforcement.
Disability advocates said that language went far beyond the gender dysphoria rule and put the entire disability rights law at risk.
Section 504 is a federal civil rights law that prohibits any entity that receives federal funding, including K-12 schools and higher education institutions, from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. The federal Office for Civil Rights defines a person with a disability as someone with “a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities.”
Despite repeated pushback from the AGs that they were not trying to get rid of Section 504, disability advocates pointed to the words used in the lawsuit, saying if the court ruled in the AGs’ favor, it could strip people with disabilities of longstanding federal protections.
The original lawsuit was filed in September 2024, two months before President Donald Trump’s election, and was stayed multiple times as the administration signaled it would revisit the rule.
The amended complaint, filed Friday by nine states excluding Alabama, removes references to gender dysphoria and no longer asks the court to invalidate Section 504 but does continue to challenge the rule’s “most integrated setting” requirement.
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