Nonprofit Hospital Exercising Rights to Religious Accommodation Threatened with Lawsuit

The Washington Post reports that, after Catholic hospital Genesys Regional Medical Center denied a request from Jessica Mann to perform a tubal ligation following the future delivery of her baby by Caesarean section, Mann “sent a letter through the American Civil Liberties Union threatening legal action.”  The hospital denied the request, reports the Post, because “Catholic mandates forbid procedures that cause sterilization … and officials said she did not qualify for an exception.”  

Fellow law professor Robin Wilson of Illinois is quoted as saying that “[f]ederal law provides an ‘iron-clad’ exemption for medical providers who do not want to provide abortion or sterilization services.”  Professor Wilson is further quoted as articulating a reason for the statutory accommodation:

Wilson said judges must tread especially carefully in situations such as Mann’s, which are not acute emergencies.

 

“If it’s not an emergency, why should you wash out the religious character of that hospital?” she said. “You want a diversity of providers so people who have different values can actually find providers who match those values.”

The post reports that ACLU officials “argue that the federal protections cited by Wilson do not apply in the Mann case.”  The grounds for the ACLU’s argument are not entirely clear from the Post’s coverage.

JRB