Court Cases

Chamorro v. Dignity Health (Religious Refusals)

Gender, Sexuality, & Reproductive Justice Project

Filed: 12/28/2015
Status: Closed
Court: Superior Court of the State of California for the County of San Francisco
Latest Update: Dec 28, 2015

Summary

Chamorro v. Dignity Health is a case that challenges religious refusals of reproductive health care to patients.

The ACLU and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health for the hospital chain’s use of religious directives to deny basic reproductive health care to its patients. Filed on behalf of patient Rebecca Chamorro and Physicians for Reproductive Health, the suit argues that withholding pregnancy-related care for reasons other than medical considerations is illegal in California.

Chamorro, a patient at Mercy Medical Center in Redding, decided with her doctor that she would get a tubal ligation during her scheduled C-section in late January. But the hospital refused her doctor’s request to perform the procedure, citing religious directives that classify sterilization procedures as “intrinsically evil.” The refusal creates a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Catholic hospital chains have rapidly expanded over the past 15 years and their interference with the doctor-patient relationship presents a real threat to women’s ability to access basic healthcare across the country.

On April 25, 2022, the trial court ruled that the California law on when hospitals could deny sterilizations permitted hospitals to deny tubal ligations based on religious reasons. However we were able to obtain information during the case that revealed the extent to which Dignity Health permits religious rules to interfere with medical decision making.