HHS launches workplace to implement religious-freedom legal guidelines

The president plans to address the march by satellite from the White House Rose Garden. The new division aims to protect health care providers who refuse treatment on religious or moral grounds.

Acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan said during the press conference, “For too long healthcare practitioners have been bullied”. Violations can result in a service provider losing government funding. And efforts to expand so-called “religious exceptions” to medical procedures are expected to face legal battles.

“Too many of these healthcare practitioners have been bullied and discriminated against due to their religious beliefs or moral convictions”, Hargan said at the event. The new office will protect those who choose to discriminate against women, LGBT people, and any others who offend their religious sensibilities. I suspect (sorry!) that regulations or some form of guidance will be forthcoming, and that it will provide more specific information for healthcare employers trying to handle religious conscience issues. “Log Cabin Republicans is proud to support both religious liberty and LGBT equality, but the Conscience & Religious Freedom Division at HHS seems primed to tip the scales in favor of overly broad, vague, and frivolous complaints that disproportionately impact the LGBT community in matters – quite literally – that could mean life and death”.

The establishment of the new HHS division would seemingly kill a provision of the ACA that “prohibits the denial of health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping”.

While the 24-hour news cycle is now busy chewing through President Trump’s health report, another significantly important health story is gaining traction.

In that vein, Trump has created Religious Freedom Day, in a presidential proclamation issued yesterday that constituted a clear assault on LGBT rights.

Melling said that if the HHS moves to enforce any sort of discriminatory policy, the ACLU will take them to court. Those initiatives have run into legal challenges.

The Alliance Defending Freedom released this statement: “We commend HHS for creating its new Division on Conscience and Religious Freedom within its Office of Civil Rights”. They are free to file a complaint. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., pledged to keep a close eye on the new enforcement office. Hundreds of people packed into the first-floor auditorium of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building near the Capitol to laud the Trump administration’s creation of a religious conscience office.

Some Democrats expressed concern that the change could restrict access to healthcare. “This is about transgender people turned away from emergency rooms and doctors offices”, she told Fox News.

But Brown also said, “I’m a doctor because I’m a Christian”. But according to NBC News, this reasoning is based on essentially nothing, since trans health care costs the DOD very little in comparison with the Department’s total budget, and the health cost of cisgender people in the military. It’s a world that has become increasingly secular, even if many of its major institutions sprang from religious charity.

Hamilton said that while courts had frequently upheld religious exemptions in recent years, they have recognized limits. “It’s these conscience protections that allow us to work and live alongside each other despite our differences”.