Legal Update: Protecting Pro-Life Employees

As you may know, the ACLJ is dedicated to defending human life, and an important part of our legal works centers on protecting the conscience rights of health care providers who object to dispensing abortion-producing prescription drugs.

Now, with the Obama Administration promising to undo the Department of Health and Human Services recent regulations protecting these conscience rights, our work to safeguard those rights has taken on a new sense of urgency. 

For over a decade now we have been engaged in litigation from coast-to-coast on this issue, trying cases in both the federal and state courts that have had a major impact on the struggle to uphold the right of pro-life health personnel to practice their professions in a manner consistent with their consciences. 

I wanted to bring you an update on some of the current litigation on this front:

Morr-Fitz v. Blagojevich, Circuit Court, Springfield, Illinois
The ACLJ represents two Illinois pharmacy owners who are challenging the validity of an Executive Order issued in 2005 by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.  The Order requires all pharmacy owners to stock and dispense the so-called morning after pill, which many consider to be an abortion-inducing drug.  After having been dismissed in 2005 by a lower court, just last month the Supreme Court of Illinois reversed that dismissal and sent the case back to Springfield for trial.  You can read more about that decision here.  We will be filing an amended complaint within the next few weeks and will be heading to court seeking an injunction against the Order.  We were previously successful, in the case of Menges et al. v. Blagojevich, in challenging this Order on behalf of individual pharmacists.  We are hopeful that we will now achieve a similar result on behalf of pro-life pharmacy owners.

Quayle, Menges and Muzzarelli v. Walgreens, Circuit Court, Edwardsville, Illinois
In this case we represent three pharmacists who lost their jobs in the wake of Gov. Blagojevichs Executive Order mandating the dispensing of the morning-after pill. Rather than complying with existing state and federal statutes that clearly had greater authority than the Governors Order, Walgreens fired these pharmacists when they requested accommodation of their religious objection to dispensing the drug.  Last summer, the court rejected Walgreens arguments that our clients had no claims under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, and the cases are proceeding through the pretrial discovery process.

Baretela v. Unity Health System, U.S. District Court, Rochester, New York
We represent a hospital social worker who was fired after requesting an accommodation for her religious belief that she could not in good conscience make a referral for an abortion of a twenty-two week pregnancy.  A reasonable accommodation of our clients beliefs was readily available.  We have filed a lawsuit under Title VII, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging discrimination on the basis of religion. We are currently engaged in the process of pretrial discovery.  Our purpose in bringing suits of this nature is not only to obtain just compensation for our clients serious financial losses but, more importantly, to ensure that the existing laws against discrimination are actually enforced and to deter public and private employers from treating pro-life employees as second-class citizens.

Were also working on several new cases that will likely result in litigation soon.

In Ohio, we represent a pharmacist who was fired by a large retail chain for requesting an accommodation of his religious objections to dispensing the morning-after pill.  We have received a Right to Sue letter from the EEOC and are preparing to file a lawsuit in the weeks ahead.

In Missouri, we represent another pharmacist who lost her job because her employer refused to accommodate her objections to dispensing the morning-after pill.  In what is, to our knowledge, a first in this area, the EEOC made a finding of probable cause that a national retailer had discriminated against our client in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  We expect to receive a Right to Sue letter within the week and will likely file suit next month.

This is a very important area of the law and one that we continue to pursue.  We will keep you posted on these cases and others as they develop.