The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has long had strict anti-discrimination rules. A VA center cannot refuse to treat a veteran because he or she is Black, Jewish, a woman or Latino, for example.
But according to The Guardian’s Aaron Glantz, an executive order from President Donald Trump allows some forms of discrimination.
In an article published on June 16, Glantz explains, “Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law. Language requiring health care professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.”
The executive order that Glantz references in his article was issued by Trump on January 30 and titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Glantz notes that the “primary purpose of” Trump’s executive order was “to strip most government protections from transgender people” but warned that its “far-reaching” effects could go way beyond that.
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