A recent decision by the Biden administration to allow a deadline for appeal to pass in effect preserves a federal ruling that the government cannot mandate religious doctors and hospitals to provide ‘gender-transition’ procedures that can involve removing healthy body parts against their beliefs.

The Biden administration had until June 20 to appeal the federal ruling from December, which permanently protected religious doctors and hospitals from having to perform such procedures.

“After multiple defeats in court, the federal government has thrown in the towel on its controversial, medically unsupported transgender mandate,” said Luke Goodrich of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

“Doctors take a solemn oath to ‘do no harm,’ and they can’t keep that oath if the federal government is forcing them to perform harmful, irreversible procedures against their consciences and medical expertise.”