In hospitals on religious exemptions, the Federalists are investigating the gender care

The Trump administration has launched investigations into health care organizations in an attempt to allow the providers to refuse to care for transgender patients on religious or ethical foundations.

One The latest procedures Through the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services, which was launched in mid -June, it targets the health system at the University of Michigan regarding the allegations of previous employees that it was expelled to request a religious exemption from providing sex care.

An administrative publication announces the investigation that the Michigan case is the third investigation into “a greater effort to enhance the enforcement of laws that protect conscience and religious exercises” for medical service providers, citing federal laws known as the name Church modifications.

The investigations said the first time that HHS has explicitly claimed the amendments, “Services allowed to refuse to make sure of the gender care or wrong patients.” Elizabeth SberProfessor at the University of Texas who study the laws of conscience. Sber said that these laws primarily allow objections to perform abortion or sterilization, but “they do not apply to gender care, through their own text.”

But the religious freedom groups that supported the health worker in the Michigan case, Valerie Closterman, says that the investigation is a welcome recognition of the current protection of medical professionals to refuse to provide some types of care that contradict their beliefs.

“We are pleased to know that the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services is seriously responsible for enforcing federal laws that protect religious health care providers,” said Kayla Tony, the Klossterman’s lawyer, from the First Freedom Institute, who is defending the prosecutors in Clostman, from the first institute, which calls for the religious freedoms of religious.

Other cases have announced by HHS in recent months Ultrasound technicians Those who did not want to participate in “abortion procedures contradict their religious beliefs or ethical convictions” nurse From a religious exemption request, “avoid giving adulthood and hormones over sex to children,” according to HHS. The administration did not reveal the sites of these investigations.

Sber said that the opening investigations into gender care cases are a new HHS tactic after that Federal courts Prohibited 2019 effort By the previous Trump administration to expand the rules of conscience.

Sam Bagnistos, General Adviser to HHS during the Biden Administration and professor at the University of Michigan, said that he sends a message that this administration “will investigate or annoy gender assertions, even when this ruling is legal in the states where they work.”

HHS Andrew Nixon spokesman refused to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

HHS has launched investigations after years of Closemman filed a lawsuit against the former employer. I started working at the Metropolitan Hospital in Caldonia, Michigan, as a doctor in 2004. When the hospital merged to become part of the University of Michigan Health in 2021, Closerman participated in “mandatory training for diversity”, according to a federal lawsuit submitted in 2022.

In these training and follow -up discussions, the health system tried to “forced Mrs. Clostraman to pledge, against her religious condemnation with sincerity and her medical conscience, that she was talking about the consciences of biology and the manufacture of” medicines and transition procedures between gender “, according to the prosecution by Closemram’s lawyer.

This was, at this stage, a purely virtual: “No patient was asked to refer from these drugs or procedures, and she never used pronouns contrary to the patient’s desires,” as the case claimed.

But when Closemman requested a religious residence, it was “called” to a meeting with the officials, who “called it” evil “and” a liar “, she told her sarcastically that she could not take the Bible or her religious beliefs to work with her, and she blamed this in the field of gender turmoil, and according to the conditions, according to the law, it was launched in August 2021, after that.

The health system denied all allegations, and in April 2024, American boycott judge Jane Beckering rejected the Closemram case to move forward. Closeterman’s lawyers submitted an appeal to the American Appeal Court for the Sixth Circuit. Appeal judges heard oral arguments in the case in February, but they did not issue a decision.

Paula M. said. Stanard, Director of the Civil Rights Bureau, in a statement announced by the investigation, that HHS has begun to achieve it under the church amendments because it is “committed to enforcing federal conscience laws in health care.” “Healthcare workers should be able to exercise both their professions and faith.”

But the investigation “represents a real expansion that goes beyond what the Trump administration did in the first chapter, as well as in terms of the text of the law,” said Seber.

The date of the Church amendments to the 1970s and allows health care institutions and service providers to refuse to participate in abortion or sterilization procedures.

“Some of these things also apply to the end of life and to get to know the doctor in death. So they have a relatively narrow range,” said Seber. “They focus on a set of procedures. They do not allow health care providers or institutions to refuse to provide all kinds of care based on their religious or moral objections.”

“There is one broader judgment in these laws” related to the decision -based decision to perform a legal medical procedure. ” But this only applies to beneficiaries of a “grant or a contract for medical or behavioral research.” So this condition is “a severe extension to protect the conscience, and perhaps more than an extension.”

but Ismail RuwairThe Director of Islam and Religious Freedom at the Institute of Religious Freedom, which has submitted a brief summary to support the Closeman suit, said that the church amendments are only a few HHS laws, along with a wide side Civil rights protection And the laws that prohibit discrimination On the basis of religion.

“This is not a condition in which someone rejects the treatment of a gay person,” said Ruyer. “This is a case for a person who does not believe that he should be forced to use pronouns that would be a lie.”

He said that other service providers are available if the patient’s feelings were afflicted. “But painful feelings are not a basis for the government that violates our constitutional rights.”

Sber said the health system risks are very different in the HHS investigation of civil suits. The government agency, which oversees the vast majority of health care spending, decides to strip Medicare and Medicaid funding from the health system. Cyber ​​said HHS was hesitant to remove financing.

Pajenstos said it would be very unusual – and perhaps illegal – to block HHS funding from the health system on such a case.

By publicly conducting these investigations, Seber said, HHS puts healthy systems “in a very difficult situation.” She said that anti -discrimination laws require them to treat sexually transformed patients. But now the administration gives priority, “employees who may want to make it difficult for transgender patients to obtain care.”

Sber said these investigations “aim to provide red meat to the gay anti -gay movement, to tell them that HHS is next to them.”

This article is partnership with Michigan audience and NPR.