Texas district judge overturns Biden rule on expanded abortion privacy protections

A Texas federal judge late Wednesday overturned a Biden administration rule designed to keep prosecutors from getting the medical records of patients seeking legal abortions or gender-affirming care by boosting privacy protections for women’s reproductive health information. 

District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo ruled the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acted unlawfully when it expanded the scope of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy law last April.  

Kacsmaryk wrote that the Biden administration “invoked HIPAA as a shield against abortion-restrictive states.” He said the rule was written to protect “politically preferred procedures,” like abortion and gender transitions, but that HIPAA doesn't give the HHS the ability to “distinguish between types of health information to accomplish political ends.”  

“Thus, HHS lacks the authority to issue regulations that enact heightened protections for information about politically favored procedures,” he wrote.  

Such action should only be taken by Congress, he wrote, especially because the issues are of major political significance. 

"The 2024 rule creates special rules for information about these politically favored procedures that implicate fundamental and hotly debated questions,” he wrote.  

The rule prohibits health care providers and insurers from giving information about a legal abortion to state law enforcement authorities who are seeking to punish someone in connection with that abortion. 

The 2024 rule came in the wake of concerns that patients who travel to clinics for legal abortion or reproductive care will eventually have their records sought following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

Late last year, Kacsmaryk temporarily blocked the HHS from enforcing the rule against the Texas doctor who had brought the lawsuit. Carmen Purl, a Texas physician, sued to declare the rule “arbitrary and capricious” and “in excess of statutory authority,” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. 

Wednesday's decision blocks the rule nationwide. 

Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by President Trump in his first term, has become a go-to judge for blocking Biden-era rules nationwide. 

Texas has filed a separate lawsuit challenging the rule, which is pending in federal court in Lubbock. The HHS in a court filing last month said the Trump administration is evaluating its position in this case.