Texas sues to block Biden rule protecting privacy for women who get abortions

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) - Texas sued the Biden administration in an effort to block a new rule that seeks to protect the privacy of women living in states that ban abortion who travel out of state for the procedure.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Lubbock, Texas, the state is asking a federal judge to strike down the rule, which prohibits healthcare providers and insurers from giving state law enforcement authorities information about reproductive healthcare that is legal where it was provided.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said in announcing the rule in April that no one should have their medical records "used against them, their doctor, or their loved one just because they sought or received lawful reproductive health care."

The measure came in response to efforts by authorities in some Republican-led states that ban abortion, including Texas, to restrict out-of-state travel for abortion. So far, no criminal prosecutions or civil judgments have resulted from those efforts.

Providers and insurers must fully comply with the new rule by December.

Texas is also asking the court to block a separate rule issued in 2000, which said healthcare providers and insurers can only hand over information if it is relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry and is limited in scope.

Texas said in its lawsuit that providers frequently cite the 2000 rule as a reason for not responding to subpoenas from state investigators, and have begun invoking the new rule as well.

Both rules were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the federal law on patient privacy. Texas claims that HHS went beyond its authority under HIPAA in passing both rules, because the law preserves states' authority to conduct investigations.

"This new rule actively undermines Congress's clear statutory meaning when HIPAA was passed, and it reflects the Biden administration's disrespect for the law," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

HHS declined to comment directly on the lawsuit but said in a statement that the rule "stands on its own – women should be able to access legal reproductive health care without their medical records being used to track them or their doctors for liability."

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump who has often ruled against Biden's policies. The administration has in the past accused Texas of "judge shopping" by bringing cases in small cities like Lubbock, where local rules assign most cases to Trump appointees.

Texas is one of more than 20 Republican-led states that have banned or restricted abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision eliminating the longstanding nationwide right to abortion.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)