The state of Texas filed a lawsuit against a federal rule that aims to provide medical privacy for women who seek abortions who live in states that ban abortion and who travel out of state for the procedure.
Paxton also alleged in his statement that the federal government is making a “backdoor attempt” at targeting Texas’s laws on state law enforcement investigations into medical procedures.
Texas is also asking the court to block a separate rule issued in 2000, which said health care providers and insurers can only hand over information if it is relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry and is limited in scope.
The state 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. It also claimed that that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) went beyond its authority under HIPAA in passing both rules, because the law preserves states’ authority to conduct investigations.
“As is relevant here, the final rules purport to limit the circumstances when a HIPAA covered entity can share information with state officials and law enforcement,” the Texas suit said. “HIPAA covered entities that share information with State investigators in contravention of these rules incur criminal liability.”
But the federal rules may contravene HIPAA because “the HIPAA statute explicitly preserves state investigative authority, and thus, the rules are contrary to the statute,” according to the suit.
HIPPA also does not grant the federal government the capacity to “promulgate rules limiting how regulated entities may share information with state government,” it further added. “These rules significantly harm the State of Texas’s investigative abilities because covered entities frequently cite” the 2000 rule for not being able to “comply with a valid investigative subpoena for documents, and have already begun invoking the 2024 Privacy Rule for similar purpose,” it added.
The Epoch Times contacted HHS, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, for comment but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.
“The Biden–Harris Administration is providing stronger protections to people seeking lawful reproductive health care regardless of whether the care is in their home state or if they must cross state lines to get it,” the statement said. “With reproductive health under attack by some lawmakers, these protections are more important than ever.”
An HHS official, Melanie Fontes Rainer, said in the April statement that the government has received reports of “concerns” from health care providers that “when patients travel to their clinics,” their records may be sought by state law enforcement officials where they live.
Texas is one of more than 20 states that have banned or restricted abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which effectively turned the issue back to the states.
