Courts & Law

Supreme Court turns down chance to consider whether a Catholic hospital can be sued over transgender rights

By Robert Barnes
Today at 9:57 a.m. EDT

The Supreme Court turned down the chance to consider whether a Catholic hospital can be sued over refusing a transgender patient treatment the hospital says would violate its core religious beliefs.

A California court said Evan Minton could pursue his lawsuit after a hospital canceled a scheduled hysterectomy after learning days before that he was transgender. The operation was part of his treatment for gender dysphoria, a condition in which an individual’s gender identity does not conform to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch said they would have accepted the case.

Minton was scheduled to receive the operation in 2016 at Mercy San Juan Medical Center near Sacramento, a hospital in the Dignity Health chain. After complaints from his physician and media reports about the denial, the operation was performed several days later at a Methodist hospital that is part of the chain.

{snip}

The ACLU argued that it was premature for the Supreme Court to get involved, because there has not been a final judgment in the case.

Minton’s case was one of those cited when the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services issued the Refusal of Care Rule, which was to support religious entities that said their beliefs would be violated by providing certain care to LGBTQ individuals.

A judge stopped the rule before it went into effect, and the Biden administration has disavowed it.

The case is Dignity Health, Inc. v. Minton.

By Robert Barnes
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions, including metropolitan editor and national political editor. He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006. Twitter https://twitter.com/scotusreporter