in a letter asking General Paxton to affirm that MDs and DOs enjoy the same legal rights. To read the letter, visit tma.tips/DOletter. At that point, Judge Olsen an-


nounced he would accept commit- ment requests signed by DOs, pending the decision from General Paxton. Before Senator Schwertner’s in- tervention, TMA, the Harris County Medical Society, the Texas Osteopath- ic Medical Association, the Federation of Texas Psychiatry, and the Ameri- can Osteopathic Association had all written to Judge Olsen explaining the legal equivalence in Texas of al- lopathic and osteopathic physicians. “Eliminating DOs’ authority in the most populous county in Texas could have disastrous consequences for the health and safety of persons who phy- sicians have determined need protec- tive psychiatric care,” they wrote.


Court blocks ACA rule on transgender services


A FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT judge in Texas has blocked the government from enforcing antidiscrimination protections related to gender transi- tion and pregnancy termination-re- lated services, a victory for Texas and seven other states involved in a law- suit against the federal government. The states and three health care or- ganizations sued over U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule language that prohibits discrimi- nating on the basis of “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy,” part of a rule attempting to align the non- discrimination portions of the Afford- able Care Act. The rule did not define termination of pregnancy but did de- fine gender identity as “an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex as- signed at birth.”


20 TEXAS MEDICINE March 2017


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