December 29, 2022, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), entitled Safeguarding the Rights of Conscience as Protected by Federal Statutes, which proposes to restore the longstanding process for the handling of conscience complaints and provide additional safeguards to protect against conscience and religious discrimination.
In 2019, OCR issued a regulation that provided broad definitions, created new compliance regulations, and created a new enforcement mechanism for a number of statutes related to the conscience rights of certain federally funded health care entities and providers. The 2019 Final Rule was held unlawful by three federal district courts. In light of these court decisions, and consistent with the Administration’s commitment to safeguard the rights of federal conscience and religious nondiscrimination while protecting access to care, this NPRM proposes to partially rescind the Department’s 2019 rule while reinforcing other processes previously in place for the handling of conscience and religious freedom complaints.
