LEGAL
SCOTUS Allows Trans Man to Sue Catholic Hospital
Mercy San Juan Medical Center cancelled Evan Minton’s scheduled hysterectomy
BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD
Supreme Court Justices
Clarence Thomas, Samuel
Alito, and Neil Gorsuch
are eager to have
the court expand the Free Exercise
Clause by recognizing a general
right for religious objectors to
refuse to comply with laws that
“burden” their religious beliefs, but
evidently were not able to convince
any of their conservative colleagues
to cast the fourth vote necessary to
grant review of a California state
court ruling that a transgender
man can sue a Catholic hospital
for discrimination because it
cancelled his hysterectomy. The
Court’s denial of review was announced
on November 1.
Evan Minton’s doctor had scheduled
the hysterectomy to be performed
at Mercy San Juan Medical
Center on August 30, 2016, as part
of Minton’s gender transition. Mercy
San Juan is one of many hospitals
owned by Dignity Health.
When the hospital learned that the
procedure was for purposes of gender
transition, it cancelled the procedure,
informing the doctor that
she would “never” be allowed to
perform a hysterectomy on Minton
at Mercy because “it was scheduled
as part of a course of treatment for
gender dysphoria, as opposed to
any other medical diagnosis,” and
this violated Catholic principles.
The doctor could perform hysterectomies
on cisgender women for
such conditions as “chronic pelvic
pain and uterine fi broids,” however,
which the hospital recognized
as medical conditions requiring
treatment.
According to the September
2019 opinion for the California
First District Court of Appeal by
Justice Stuart R. Pollak, the cancellation
caused Minton “great
anxiety and grief.” Minton’s discrimination
complaint against the
hospital explained that the timing
of the operation was particularly
sensitive because it needed to be
completed three months before his
phalloplasty, which was scheduled
for November 23. The hospital’s
Evan Minton sued a Catholic hospital after his surgery was denied.
president suggested to the doctor
that she could get emergency
admitting privileges at Methodist
Hospital, another hospital owned
by Dignity Health, and ultimately
the procedure was performed there
on September 2.
Nonetheless, Minton sued Dignity
Health, claiming a violation
of California’s Unruh Civil Rights
Act, which forbids public accommodations
to discriminate because
of a person’s gender identity. Dignity
claimed a First Amendment
right to not have gender transition
procedures performed at Mercy
San Juan, arguing that by letting
the procedure be done at Methodist,
it had fulfi lled any obligation
under the law to provide “full and
equal access” to medical procedures
without regard to gender, as
required by the law. The trial judge
granted Dignity Health’s motion to
dismiss the complaint, claiming
that the three-day delay caused
by the need to reschedule at a different
hospital owned by Dignity
Health was not unlawful, even if,
as Minton alleged, it was motivated
by his gender identity.
ACLU
Reversing the trial judge, the
Court of Appeals held that the
Unruh Act applied to Minton’s intentional
discrimination claim
against Dignity Health, and rejected
Dignity Health’s argument
that even if the court ultimately
found that the hospital’s denial of
care at Mercy San Juan was motivated
by his gender identity, his
claim would be barred under the
religious freedom and freedom of
expression guarantees in the California
and US Constitutions. Furthermore,
it held that California’s
compelling interest in providing
non-discriminatory access to medical
treatment would prevail over
the hospital’s state constitutional
freedom argument.
Turning to Dignity Health’s federal
constitution claim, the court
quoted from the US Supreme
Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling,
which stated: “While religious
and philosophical objections are
protected by the First Amendment,
it is a general rule that such
objections do not allow business
owners and other actors in the
economy and in society to deny
protected persons equal access to
goods and services under a neutral
and generally applicable public accommodations
law.” This quote
was based on the Supreme Court’s
1990 decision in Employment Division
v. Smith, which had reversed
earlier Supreme Court precedents
holding to the contrary.
The California Supreme Court
denied Dignity Health’s petition
to review this ruling on March 17,
2020.
Overruling Employment Division
v. Smith is a major goal of
the conservative religious enthusiasts
on the Supreme Court and
the conservative legal community
generally. In last spring’s Fulton v.
City of Philadelphia decision, they
argued that the court should have
used that case to overrule Smith,
but they were unable to persuade
Justices Amy Coney Barrett and
Brett Kavanaugh, their likely allies
on the issue, to do so. Dignity
Health’s Supreme Court petition
was fi led by attorneys from Consovoy
McCarthy PLLC, a fi rm that
specializes in advancing religious
freedom claims in the federal appeals
courts, joined by the politically
connected Los Angeles fi rm
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.
Dignity Health’s petition to the
Supreme Court asked the court to
answer the question of whether the
Free Exercise Clause would “bar a
state-law claim that seeks to compel
a religiously-affi liated hospital
to allow medical procedures that
violate its longstanding, deeply
held religious beliefs,” and whether
the First Amendment’s free expression
and free association guarantees
would “bar a state-law claim
that seeks to compel a religiouslyaffi
liated hospital to allow — and
thereby endorse and be associated
with — medical procedures that
violate its longstanding, deeply
held religious beliefs?”
Although they did not fi le a dissenting
opinion, Justices Thomas,
Alito and Kavanaugh had
the Court’s clerk indicate on the
November 1 Order List that they
would have granted the petition for
review in this case.
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