Congress said it in 1973. Now the rulebook says it too.
On Oct. 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a final rule saying gender dysphoria not caused by a physical condition is not a disability under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, HHS announced.
The rule covers every program and activity that receives HHS money.
What changed
Section 504 bars programs that get federal money from discriminating on the basis of disability. When Congress wrote the law, it left some conditions out, including "gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments."
The Biden administration's 2024 rule never said gender dysphoria was a disability. But its preamble suggested it could be. In April 2025, HHS said that preamble had no force of law.
The new rule writes Congress's exclusions directly into HHS's regulation, at 45 C.F.R. § 84.4(g), and states plainly that gender dysphoria not caused by a physical condition is one of them.
What they said
"The Biden-era pronouncements that indicated gender dysphoria may be a disability served the commercial interests of a predatory, multi-billion-dollar industry and betrayed the original intention of those laws," said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Congress defined which conditions qualify for protection as disabilities under federal law, and HHS has a duty to faithfully apply the law as written."
"This rule ensures recipients of HHS funding follow those definitions, eliminating confusion for the people they serve and restoring confidence in the statute," said HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Paula M. Stannard.
How we got here
Kennedy announced the proposed rule in December 2025, and HHS published it on Dec. 19, 2025. HHS says it received more than 380 comments and responded to the significant issues raised.
Source: HHS press release, Oct. 30, 2026
Photo: G. Edward Johnson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- hhs
- section 504
- gender dysphoria
- federal policy