Religious and Conscience Objections to Gender Diversity and the Health Care Rights of LGBTQ Patients

On May 2, 2019, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a new regulation that it titled, “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority.” About a month later, on June 13, 2019, HHS also proposed new Section 1557 regulations. Section 1557 is the anti-discrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act. Under the Obama Administration, in 2016, HHS had finalized its Section 1557 implementing regulations. Section 1557 prohibits discrimination in health care on the basis of sex and the original regulations had defined “sex” to include gender identity.

The new proposed regulations would alter those regulations in a few different ways, notably to eliminate the definition of “sex.”
Speaker Christy Hall will discuss these regulatory changes and uncertainty and how that affects the health care rights and protection of LGBTQ+ people. She will go beyond discussing the regulatory changes to address underlying gender bias in the legal profession that may play out in providing legal advice to health care clients. She will seek to provide a greater understanding of gender diversity, and provide strategies for using this new knowledge to overcome biases in the legal profession, allowing legal professionals to provide the best advice to their health care clients as they seek to follow these new regulations.