The Senate voted Wednesday to affirm Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services. The vote is a set of history-making one: Levine is the first openly transgender federal official to be affirmed by the Senate.
The vote was 52-48 for her affirmation.
Levine was already Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, where she led the commonwealth’s COVID-19 response.
Prior to the vote, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked her colleagues to help Levine’s nomination, considering her a “trusted voice” for Pennsylvanians on issue, including opioid prescribing guidelines, health equity and LGBTQ health care.
Murray additionally noted the significance of the vote.
“I’ve always said the people in our government should reflect the people it serves, and today we will take a new historic step towards making that a reality. I’m proud to vote for Dr. Levine and incredibly proud of the progress this confirmation will represent, for our country and for transgender people all across it who are watching today,” she said.
Levine started her medical career as a pediatrician at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and she is a professor at the Penn State College of Medicine, where she instructs on points like adolescent medicine, eating disorders and transgender medicine. She is an alum of Harvard College and the Tulane University School of Medicine.
In an statement in January about the selection, President Biden said Levine “will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their ZIP code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond.”
A month ago’s affirmation hearing for Levine included confrontational addressing by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in which the administrator requested to know whether Levine accepts minors are fit for making “such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex,” comparing sex reassignment procedures to “genital mutilation.”
Levine replied, “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed and, if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the assistant secretary of health, I will look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine.”
In her job as Pennsylvania’s wellbeing secretary, Levine confronted “relentless comments and slurs” about her gender identity, Gov. Tom Wolf said in an explanation the previous summer.
Levine was beforehand the state’s physician general, a post for which she was consistently affirmed.
“With very few exceptions my being transgender is not an issue,” Levine revealed to The Washington Post in 2016. She said then that it’s her work for which she needs to be known.
“I’m very confident in who I am,” she said.