WASHINGTON — The Trump administration says it plans to roll back a rule issued by President Barack Obama that prevents doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies from discriminating against transgender people.

Advocates said the change could jeopardize the significant gains that transgender people have seen in access to medical care, including gender reassignment procedures — treatments for which many insurers denied coverage in the past.

The rule was adopted in 2016 to carry out a major civil rights law embedded in the Affordable Care Act. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance.

The Obama administration said the rule covered “almost all practicing physicians in the United States” because they accept some form of federal remuneration or reimbursement. It applies, for example, to hospitals that accept Medicare and doctors who receive Medicaid payments, as well as to insurers that participate in health insurance marketplaces.

Trump administration officials said they believed they had to modify the rule because a federal judge in Texas had found that parts of it were unlawful.

“The Department of Health and Human Services has submitted a draft of a proposed rule” to the White House for clearance, the Justice Department told the judge this past week. And the White House confirmed that it was reviewing the proposed rule on “nondiscrimination in health programs.”

The Trump administration has been scaling back protections for transgender people on several fronts. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, reversing an Obama administration policy, said the main federal job discrimination law “does not encompass discrimination based on gender identity per se.”

Jocelyn Samuels, who was the director of the civil rights office under Mr. Obama and an architect of the rule, said, “If the Trump administration rescinds the protections against sex stereotyping and gender identity discrimination, the effect will be potentially devastating not just for the trans community, but for any other patients who are gender-nonconforming, including lesbian and gay individuals.” Read more via New York Times