14. Department of Health and Human Services · Major
Reverse the redefinition of sex across HHS and CMS programs
Printed page 475 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“The redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation and pregnancy to cover abortion should be reversed in all HHS and CMS programs as was done under the Trump Administration. This includes the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).”
What has happened
- Partially done
CMS finalized a rule barring federal Medicaid and CHIP funds for sex-rejecting procedures for minors, requiring State Medicaid and separate CHIP plans to refuse payment (effective 2026-10-13, with a six-month run-off for beneficiaries already on cross-sex hormone therapy). This reaches CHIP, which the Mandate names. It is the furthest the reversal has gone by rule; no HHS-wide regulation redefining sex across every program was found, so the sweep is not complete.
- Partially done
HHS's Office for Civil Rights rescinded or disavowed a set of its own guidance documents under Executive Orders 14192 and 14219, including (the following day) the 2023 guidance to retail pharmacies on nondiscriminatory access to reproductive health care that had read sex discrimination to reach abortion-related services.
- Attempted
Executive Order 14168 directed every agency, HHS included, to use "sex" rather than "gender identity" and to enforce statutes protecting women on that basis — a government-wide directive that changed no HHS or CMS program by itself.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Overlaps #1395, which owns the Section 1557 and Section 504 rulemaking trail (the 2025-04-11 Section 504 clarification, the 2025-12-19 proposed rule, and the 2026-06-02 notice that a court vacated the 2024 Section 1557 rule’s gender-identity provisions). Those actions also reverse the redefinition of sex and are named here only in prose to avoid double-counting.
- A companion CMS rule, “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Prohibiting Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Children,” was proposed on 2025-12-19; no final rule had been published by 2026-08-26, the last time the federal records we keep and search were refreshed.
- Under the rule for open-ended “all X” asks, a government-wide directive plus documented implementing actions is partial; done would need the named object gone across HHS and CMS or an allowlisted statement that the sweep is complete.
- Action
- rescind
- Object
- redefinition of sex in HHS and CMS programs
- ID
- 1312