Supreme Court Declines Case of CA Catholic Hospital that Doesn't Want to Perform Transgender Hysterectomies

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that pits religious freedom against transgender rights. 

That means a lower court decision will remain in place against a California Catholic hospital that wouldn't allow a biological female, who now identifies as a transgender man, to have a hysterectomy there.

The high court turned down the case without comment even though conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would have heard the case. 

As CBN News reported in 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Evan Michael Minton who was refused a hysterectomy at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, Calif. The Catholic hospital refused to perform the procedure at its facility saying it was an "elective sterilization" that violated the hospital's ethical and religious obligations.

Minton claimed the hospital canceled his scheduled hysterectomy after he mentioned to a nurse two days before surgery that he's transgender.

The hospital quickly helped transfer the surgery to a non-Catholic facility and Minton had the surgery performed three days later at that other hospital.  

Minton was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a medical condition where a person experiences deep discomfort with the gender assigned them at birth, according to a court document filed in his lawsuit in 2017.  

ACLU attorneys sued Mercy San Juan's operator Dignity Health on behalf of Minton, alleging the hospital and its network violated California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination and says businesses must offer full and equal access to residents.

A trial court agreed with the hospital that a three-day delay in the procedure did not involve a denial of "full and equal" access to health care under California law. 

However, an appeals court reversed that decision in 2019.  

On Monday,  ACLU attorney Elizabeth Gill told the Sacramento Bee the Supreme Court's decision means they can now start litigation in state trial court.

In a statement to the Bee, Dignity Health said: "In keeping with our Catholic faith, at our Catholic-sponsored care sites we do not offer certain services including sterilizing procedures such as hysterectomies to any patient regardless of gender identity unless the patient has a life-threatening condition."

"Courts have long recognized the right of faith-based providers to offer services that are consistent with their religious beliefs. Although the Supreme Court will not consider this important issue at this time, we plan to continue to pursue the case at the lower-court level," the statement said. 

This was the second time this year that the Supreme Court has decided not to step in giving transgender rights groups a win in the conservative court. In June, the justices declined to weigh in on a different case involving transgender rights. In that case, the justices rejected a Virginia school board's appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. 

Open Season on Catholic Hospitals? 

As CBN News reported last year, Wesley Smith, a bioethicist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism called transgender lawsuits "open season" on Catholic hospitals.

In an op-ed published in the National Review, he examined the case of a Baltimore man who had filed a lawsuit against a hospital in July of 2020, claiming he was discriminated against for being transgender because a Catholic hospital had declined to perform his hysterectomy.

Smith explained the hospital did not refuse the surgery because the patient was transgender, but because the surgery would have removed a healthy organ. 

"Catholic moral principles only permit body parts to be removed to treat physical pathology," he writes. "If the patient's uterus had been cancerous the surgery would not have been a problem."

Smith also noted the vital role that Catholic hospitals play in providing healthcare to low-income areas. 

"Many Catholic hospitals will close before being forced to practice medicine in ways that violate Catholic doctrine. That could leave a lot of communities with reduced access to quality health care," he said.

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