SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined with 18 other state attorneys general in opposing proposed new federal rules that they say could strip many LGBT individuals of many health care rights.

The proposed rule deals with non-discrimination policies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It would delete current language in HHS regulations, adopted in the final weeks of the Obama administration, that prohibits discrimination in the agency’s programs “based on non-merit factors such as age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

That rule was based, in part, on the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The proposed new rule would replace that language with a generic ban on discrimination “to the extent doing so is prohibited by federal statute.”

The proposed change was published in the Federal Register Nov. 19. In that notice, the agency cited concerns that the Obama-era rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the federal government “from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion.” That law, however, also allows exceptions when there is a “compelling state interest” in doing so and the burden is the “least restrictive means of furthering that interest.”