HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general in a letter supporting the Trump Administration’s revision of a Biden-era Health and Human Services (“HHS”) rule that unlawfully promulgated a woke agenda over federal funding for state disability programs.
The Biden administration’s 2024 Rule sought to radically expand the definition of “disability” under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to include “gender dysphoria,” despite clear statutory language that expressly excludes “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments.” In practice, the rule risked diverting resources away from individuals with genuine disabilities and jeopardized services in states that did not comply with the Biden administration’s radical gender ideology.
In 2024, Attorney General Knudsen was part of a coalition of states that challenged the rule, exposing its legal flaws and the severe harm it would impose on state budgets, operations, and those who rely on federal disability assistance. Now, the Trump Administration has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will reverse the Biden-era rule’s inclusion of gender dysphoria as a federally protected disability and restore the proper limits of federal disability law.
“But gender dysphoria is diagnosed based on subjective, self-reported feelings and distress; it is not confirmed or denied by any physical test,” the attorneys general state. “Finally, the fact that mental conditions can produce physical distress or be treated with chemical interventions does not transform a mental impairment into an independent physical impairment.”
Attorneys general from Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia also joined the letter led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
