The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued revised “conscience protection” regulations to prohibit discrimination by entities that receive HHS funding against individuals on the basis of their exercise of conscience. The regulations are currently scheduled to go into effect on July 22, 2019, although they have already been challenged in court. The revised regulations have major implications for employers who operate in the health care space and receive federal funds from HHS.
The revised regulations, which essentially restore substantive interpretations contained in regulations promulgated by the Bush Administration in 2008 and which were subsequently gutted by the Obama Administration in 2011, aim to strengthen the enforcement of existing federal conscience and antidiscrimination laws protecting individual health care providers whose religious or moral views conflict with their participation in health care services such as abortion, sterilization, the administration of vaccines, and assisted suicide, among others.
The regulations have been met with fierce opposition from civil rights advocacy groups and other opponents on grounds that they unjustifiably expand the categories of individuals who could claim an exemption to include those persons that have little to do with the actual objectionable procedure. In addition, opponents express concern that employers may be left with no one to perform an emergency medical procedure when necessary, which could endanger lives.
A copy of the revised regulations is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.