Federal Court Strikes Down Trump/Pence "Conscience Rule" Allowing Discrimination

One consistent trend of the Trump/Pence regime has been the effort to grant Christofascists special privileges and dispensation from complying with non-discrimination laws using a warped and toxic version of "religious freedom" to justify outright bigotry and discrimination.  One such example is the so-called "conscience rule" that would allow health care workers to refuse to treat anyone they disliked or disapproved so long as they could invoke the smoke screen of "religious belief."  The exemption is so broad that in theory even racial discrimination  - not to mention anti-LGBT animus - could be green lighted. The entire argument is an utter distortion of the Founders' view of religious freedom as written in the First Amendment and, as NPR pointed out, the Court noted, based on "false evidence" presented by the Trump/Pence regime:

. . . .that increase in the number of complaints is "demonstrably false," according to Engelmayer's ruling. Nearly 80% of all the complaints given to the court were about vaccinations — unrelated to health care workers and their religious beliefs in providing care. The judge writes that only 21 — or 6% — of the complaints that the government provided the court are even potentially related to providers' moral or religious objections. During oral arguments, the government's attorney conceded that the real number of complaints was "in that ballpark." "This conceded fact is fatal to HHS's stated justification for the Rule," Engelmayer writes. "Even assuming that all 20 or 21 complaints implicated the Conscience Provisions, those 20 or 21 are a far cry from the 343 that the Rule declared represented a 'significant increase' in complaints."

The rule was always about green lighting discrimination with the supposed justification fabricated after the fact. A piece in Mother Jones looks further at the Court's ruling and the insidious discrimination that the rule sought to allow (the Virginia GOP tried similar stunts that help lead to its historic defeat on Tuesday).  Here are article highlights:

The Trump administration’s “conscience rule,” which would have allowed health care providers to refuse to offer services such as abortions, contraceptive care, and vaccinations that they disagree with on religious or moral grounds, was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge on Wednesday. 

The rule, which was set to go into effect later this month, was voided by US District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan. In a 147-page opinion, Engelmayer stated that the administration did not have the authority to enact major portions of the rule change and that several parts of the Department of Health and Human Services’ argument in favor of the change were factually inaccurate. 

Had the rule, also known as the refusal-of-care rule, gone into effect, it would have enabled providers, pharmacists, and potentially employers to deny health care services, information, or referrals to patients on moral or religious grounds, even in emergencies. Hospitals that forced their employees to provide care over their personal objections would have been subject to penalties such as losing federal funding. The rule would also have allowed providers to decline to refer a patient to another provider in order to receive care based on personal objections to the service. 

The lawsuit that resulted in Wednesday’s ruling was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, nearly two dozen other states and cities, and two reproductive rights groups. “Once again, the courts have blocked the Trump administration from implementing a discriminatory rule that would only hurt Americans,” James said in a statement following the ruling. “The refusal of care rule was an unlawful attempt to allow health care providers to openly discriminate.”

Critics of the the rule argued that it would disproportionately affect the LGBTQ population by giving further protection to providers to deny care to patients based on their identities. 

“Today, the Trump administration was blocked from providing legal cover for discrimination,” Alexis McGill, acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “As the federal district court made clear, the administration acted outside its authority and made false claims to try to justify this rule. This rule put patients’ needs last and threatened their ability to access potentially lifesaving health care.”