HHS makes changes to strengthen “conscience protections”

WASHINGTON — The United States department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued two announcements last week concerning “conscience protections” for health-care workers and state programs. These announcements are the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to bring religious freedom rhetoric to the forefront within a deeply-divided political climate. On Jan. 18, the HHS announced that it has formed a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). According to the announcement, the division’s purpose is “to restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom.” OCR director Roger Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced.”

Religious accommodation or discrimination in health care services

PATERSON, N.J. – It was announced Jan. 5 that Lambda Legal had filed a federal lawsuit against New Jersey-based St. Joseph’s health care system, after “the hospital refused to allow Jionni Conforti’s surgeon to perform a routine hysterectomy because he is transgender.” St. Joseph’s maintains four top-ranked teaching facilities in northern New Jersey, but it also is “a Catholic faith-based institution” founded in 1867 by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth.