BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Two federal agencies cannot punish Catholic employers and health care providers if they refuse for religious reasons to provide gender-affirming care to transgender patients or won't provide health insurance coverage for such care to their workers, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Peter Welte, the chief federal judge in North Dakota, bars the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing a health care rule it imposed in 2024 under Democratic President Joe Biden. The rule said that existing policies against sex discrimination covered discrimination based on gender identity, so that health care providers risked losing federal funds if they refused to provide gender-affirming care.
Welte also barred the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from telling employers that a failure to have health plans cover gender-affirming care for their workers would represent discrimination based on sex that could lead to a lawsuit against them and penalties.
The judge rejected a request from an order of nuns, two Catholic homes and the Catholic Benefits Association, which represents employers, to impose similar bans on each agency covering abortion and fertility treatments Catholic organizations consider immoral. He said those claims were “underdeveloped” and not ready for court review.
But he concluded that allowing the two agencies to enforce policies on gender-affirming care or health coverage for it would restrict employers' and health care providers' ability to live out their religious beliefs, violating a 1992 federal law meant to provide broad protections for religious freedoms. The HHS rule had a provision allowing the agency to make case-by-case exceptions based on religious beliefs, but Welte said that would be insufficient.
“The case-by-case exemption procedure leaves religious organizations unable to predict their legal exposure without furthering any compelling antidiscrimination interests,” wrote Welte, who is based in Fargo.
The two agencies did not immediately respond to email messages seeking comment Thursday.
The Catholic Benefits Association serves more than 9,000 employers and about 164,000 employees enrolled in member health plans, according to its website.
The group, founded in 2013, says it “advocates for and litigates in defense of our members’ First Amendment rights to provide employee benefits and a work environment that is consistent with the Catholic faith.” The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious freedoms.
Association General Counsel Martin Nussbaum welcomed the ruling, saying the organization’s members “want to do the right thing in their health plan and in their medical services that they provide for those medical providers, and this gives them protection to doing that.”
And he said the judge's ruling suggests there are no mandates from the federal government on abortion or fertility treatments, so there is “no need to provide protection.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the Civil Rights Act's protections against discrimination based on sex also cover anti-LGBTQ+ bias in employment. The landmark 1964 act doesn't have specific provisions dealing with bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
But courts also have intervened to limit how far the federal government can go in combating anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination when religious organizations or employers with religious beliefs against LGBTQ+ rights are involved.
Both the HHS rule and the EEOC's policy on sex discrimination have their roots in efforts by President Barack Obama to protect LGBTQ+ rights in 2016, in his last year in office.
When President Donald Trump began his second term in January, he issued an order saying the federal government would not recognize transgender people's gender identities. In April, two employees said the EEOC was classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority, essentially putting them on indefinite hold.
The 2024 HHS rule also covered bias based on ”pregnancy or related conditions," and the Catholic health care providers argued that they might face losing federal funds if they refused to perform abortions, in line with Catholic opposition to abortion. But HHS said the rule wouldn't have forced them to perform abortions or provide health coverage for abortions — only that it couldn't refuse to care for someone because they'd had one, according to Welte.
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.
FILE - The federal courthouse stands in Fargo, N.D., June 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Jack Dura, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
