(CN) - A Trump-appointed federal judge struck down portions of a 2024 rule from the Department of Health and Human Services Wednesday that provided privacy protections for information related to reproductive health care like abortion and gender-affirming treatments.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas found that the rule exceeded HHS's statutory authority under HIPAA, a federal law that protects patient health information, and that it improperly regulated politically sensitive issues like abortion and gender transition without clear authorization from Congress.

"HIPAA confers authority to promulgate regulations protecting individually identifiable health information. But it confers no authority to distinguish between types of health information to accomplish political ends like protecting access to abortion and gender-transition procedures," Kacsmaryk wrote in his opinion. "Thus, HHS lacks the authority to issue regulations that enact heightened protections for information about politically favored procedures."

The rule, issued after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, amended HIPAA to bar health care providers and insurers from sharing reproductive health information with law enforcement investigating someone for seeking, providing, or facilitating reproductive care, if that care was legal where it occurred or under federal law.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing legal group, brought suit challenging the rule on behalf of a Texas doctor and her clinic. The ADF celebrated Kacsmaryk's ruling in a statement.

"As the court rightly found, doctors and states should be able to protect patients from abuse," ADF's director of regulatory practice, Matt Bowman, said. "This unlawful rule change would have weaponized laws about privacy that have nothing to do with abortion or gender identity. The Biden administration attempted to undermine state laws that protect mothers and unborn children from the harms of abortion, and vulnerable children from dangerous and sterilizing procedures like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and life-altering surgeries."

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

Kacsmaryk held that the rule unlawfully restricted the ability of health care providers like the plaintiffs from disclosing information for child abuse or public health investigations, which are specifically listed as exceptions under HIPAA, as "covered entities must scrutinize confusing abortion and gender-identity jurisprudence, legislation, and regulations to decipher whether the [reproductive health care] was lawful."

Kacsmaryk also ruled that the regulation infringed on state authority to enforce child welfare and public health laws. He pointed to a prior opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, which classified certain gender-affirming treatments for minors as child abuse under state law.

"Despite the opinion letter's lack of binding effect, it still demonstrates that States like Texas can have capacious definitions of their own child abuse or public health laws," Kacsmaryk wrote. "And [HIPAA] affords HHS no leeway to 'invalidate or limit' the 'authority, power, or procedures' of those laws by slicing off its favored procedures from a State's purview."

Finally, Kacsmaryk invoked the major questions doctrine, which holds that agencies cannot regulate issues of political significance without clear congressional authorization. He found that HIPAA did not authorize HHS to create "special protections" for "politically favored medical procedures" like abortion and gender-affirming health care.

"People of good faith vehemently disagree on both these issues. They lie at the center of what it means to be human, the relationship between biology and psychology, and how the human person interfaces with the world. These issues transcend politics, implicating anthropology, philosophy, and concepts of self," Kacsmaryk wrote. Therefore, he ruled, "until the people speak through their representatives, agencies must fall silent on issues of abortion or other matters of great political significance."

Source: Courthouse News Service