Email sent this am to HHS staff announcing new "Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (OCR)"

[ehrnst]

HHS Event Announcing New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (OCR)

Please join Acting Secretary Eric Hargan and HHS leadership as we announce the establishment of a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the Office for Civil Rights specializing in enforcement of and compliance with laws that protect conscience and free exercise of religion, and that prohibit coercion and discrimination.

HHS is taking a leading role in implementing President Trump’s Executive Order on Free Speech and Religious Liberty and the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Guidance.

What: HHS Announcement of New Division on Conscience and Religious Freedom

Date: Thursday, January 18, 2018, 10:30 am-12 pm ET

Location:
HHS Great Hall, First Floor
200 Independence Avenue, SW
Hubert H. Humphrey Bldg.
Washington, DC 20201

Congressional Speakers:
*Rep. Kevin McCarthy, House Majority Leader
*Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Co-Chair of House Values Action Team
*Sen. James Lankford, R-OK

HHS Speakers:
*Eric Hargan, HHS Acting Secretary
*Roger Severino, Director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS

Leadership Speakers:
*Montse Alvarado, Executive Director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
*Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin, President of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, an Army National Guard Chaplain, and a member of the Rabbinical Council of America’s Executive Committee
*Dr. Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University.
*Asma Uddin, Fellow, Initiative on Security and Religious Freedom at UCLA; founder of AltMuslimah
*Sara Hellwege, Nurse-midwife who was refused consideration for a job at Tampa Family Health Centers because she is a member of a pro-life medical association and has a faith-based objection to abortion and abortion-inducing drugs.

This event will be livestreamed at www.hhs.gov/live and open to the press.

More on this new division:

New HHS civil rights division to shield health workers with moral or religious objections

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-creating-civil-rights-division-to-shield-health-workers-with-moral-or-religious-objections/2018/01/17/5663d1c0-fbe2-11e7-8f66-2df0b94bb98a_story.html

[hopeforchange2008]

1. Sickening /nt

[Wounded Bear]

2. Cue lawsuits in 3...2...1...

This has got to be un-Constitutional.

[spanone]

3. ...and they were concerned about sharia law

[scarletlib]

4. Excellent!

Now we can all have Sharia Law if we want it, observation of Satanist Religious practices etc.

After all this rule is to protect religious freedom and we have an awful lot of different religions here. How about a Santeria sacrifice ritual in the office? Okay because I am observing my free exercise of religion.
Smoke a little marijuana at work as a dedicated Rastafarian.

What could possibly go wrong?

[procon]

5. Did Trump just suspend the Constitution?

Religious liberty entitles people to believe in whatever they choose, but it doesn't give them the right to force their personal belief on others.

Why are religious groups getting special carve outs that sets them above everyone else?

Why is the US government discriminating against non-believers, what about our civil rights?

What other groups will be singled out for discrimination on "moral" objections... gays, transgenders, POC, women, elderly, foreigners?

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Okay, let's do this their way.... signs on doors refusing service to

Evangelicals, no prayers in dinning room, refuse to deliver Quiverfil babies, etc. My religion tells me it's a sin to be around fakes and those who deny Jesus' teachings.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Roger Severino's wife, Carrie Severino, is also an activist:

We Know Very Little About Clinton’s Supreme Court Philosophy

BY CARRIE SEVERINO

October 18, 2016
....

Carrie Severino, a former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. New (or updated) WaPo article: HHS is targeting health workers religious objections. Heres why.

Acts of Faith

HHS is targeting health workers’ religious objections. Here’s why.

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey January 19 at 11:42 AM

....
Some critics have raised the question of whether a medical professional could deny sex reassignment surgery to someone who is transgender. Robin Fretwell Wilson, a law professor at Illinois College of Law, said it’s unclear what the law would cover because agencies within the Trump administration haven’t agreed on whether gender is protected as part of sex discrimination. ... If doctors saw this and brought a transgender case to HHS, she said, “creative HHS lawyers would then have the opportunity to decide, for example, whether ‘bottom surgery’ counted as sterilization and triggered the protection.’”

HHS’s Severino co-wrote a 2016 report for the conservative Heritage Foundation expressing concern over an Obama-era HHS proposal that doctors could be liable if they refuse to provide or pay for such hormones for gender-transition reasons.

Under Obama, HHS replaced a rule from President George W. Bush’s term that was interpreted as allowing medical workers to opt out of a broad range of medical services. Obama’s narrower version left in place only long-standing federal protections for workers who object to performing abortions or sterilizations. HHS also kept the Bush rule’s formal process for workers to file complaints.

Trump nodded to “conscience protections” in his executive order in May 2017 that was lauded by religious leaders in a Rose Garden ceremony, but many conservative religious freedom advocates didn’t think it went far enough in changing actual policy.
....

Sarah Pulliam Bailey is a religion reporter, covering how faith intersects with politics, culture and...everything. Follow @spulliam