In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that a doctor is not permitted to discriminate against gay patients on religious grounds. Moreover, the court noted that the doctor was selectively refusing to perform the same procedure on a gay patient that the doctor had performed without incident on heterosexuals.
The court sided with the plaintiff on the grounds that California state law strictly prohibits discrimination on the basis of one's sexual orientation. In doing so, the court rejected a claim by the physician that treating a gay woman would be against her "Christian" beliefs.
The court ruling, which overturned an appeals court decision for the defendant, is an enormous victory both for gay rights and also against, IMO, the selective use of "religious freedom" in order to discriminate. I have post earlier about this case and another in Virginia involving "Christian pharmacies"that decline to offer birth control and other services to women on religious grounds.
The case began in 1999 when Guadalupe "Lupita" Benítez after two years of trying to conceive using an at-home insemination kit. When she informed her doctor, Christine Brody, of her orientation, Brody replied that she could not perform intrauterine insemination, should it later be required.
Benitez said she told Brody she was gay and that is why Brody refused to treat her. Brody disputed that and said she did so because Benitez was unmarried.
Jennifer C. Pizer, a lawyer with the gay rights group Lambda Legal who is representing Benítez, said that while the law protects doctors who refuse certain treatments on religious grounds, it does not allow them to do so on a discriminatory or selective basis.
According to Maura Dolan of the LA Times Benitez filed a suit after Brody, an OB-GYN at the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, said she would not perform an intrauterine insemination. In her lawsuit, Benitez alleged that Brody said her religious views prevented her from providing the procedure to a lesbian.
Another physician at the clinic, Dr. Douglas Fenton, later told Benitez that the staff was uncomfortable helping her conceive a child and advised her to find another doctor outside the medical group, Benitez said.
The ruling by the Supreme Court paves the way for a trial, which Benitez may still lose. Nonetheless the decision at least provides a precedent that refusal to treat patients on religious grounds is not absolute.
The state high court said the doctors' constitutional rights to freedom of religion did not trump the state antidiscrimination law because the state has a compelling interest in ensuring full and equal access to medical care.
But the doctors "remain free to voice their objections, religious or otherwise, to the [law's] prohibition against sexual orientation discrimination," Justice Joyce Kennard wrote.
The court also said the doctors could testify at a trial that their religious beliefs barred them from doing the procedure for reasons other than the patient's sexual orientation.
Dolan said that Kenneth R. Pedroza, who represented the doctors, suggested that the ruling would probably cause many physicians to refuse to perform inseminations at all. Pedroza said Brody did not violate the law because it did not bar discrimination on the basis of marital status when Benitez sought insemination in 1999. The state law has since been amended.
Asked whether Brody would perform the procedure on a married lesbian, Pedroza said: "I don't know."
But Jennifer C. Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, said Benitez's experience was "sadly common" for lesbians seeking reproductive healthcare.
"We get calls routinely about it," she said.
Reporter Ashley Surdin of the Washington Post, said Pedroza claimed the referral was prompted by a mix-up in Benítez's chart. Had it not been for the miscommunication, staff doctors could have performed Benítez's procedure, the lawyer said.
IMO, this was all about covering one's ass. Until three months ago, gay marriage was not considered to be a right by the California Courts, BUT anti-discrimination law protected gays from such bias. Marital status was not a protected class at the time of the lawsuit, so the doctors tried to use the asinine marriage argument instead of the blatant discrimination based on sexual orientation.
As I wrote earlier, the fact that Brody had no problem with the procedure and was not known to ask patients about their marital status suggests that she was selectively using her Christianity to discriminate against Benitez.
Morever, performing artificial insemination on ANY woman does not seem to fit into any standard definition of Christianity since the insemination was not natural and was clearly not the work of Jeebus.
A spokesman for the California Medical Assn. said it opposes "invidious discrimination" and believes it is "not protected by a claim of a religious belief." The spokesman said he did not know what practical effect the decision would have on doctors and stressed that the group has no position on what the outcome of the lawsuit should be.
After the case landed in the state high court, civil libertarian groups sided with Benitez, and religious groups, including Jewish and Islamic clergy, argued that doctors were entitled to disavow treatments that conflicted with their beliefs.