A California Court Dealt a Blow to Religious Liberty. It’s Time for SCOTUS to Act.
The California Court of Appeals ruled that a transgender patient can sue a Catholic hospital for refusing to perform a hysterectomy. Yesterday, the California Court of Appeals issued a truly remarkable opinion in a truly remarkable case. It held that a Catholic hospital could indeed face legal liability for failing to perform a hysterectomy as part of a female-to-male “transition” — even though its policy broadly bans sterilization surgery generally (not just for trans individuals) and even though the hospital referred the patient to a non-Catholic facility in the same network. The patient obtained the hysterectomy a mere three days after the originally scheduled surgery date and sued anyway. The facts of the case are simple . The plaintiff, Evan Minton, initially scheduled a hysterectomy for August 30, 2016, at Mercy San Juan Medical Center (part of the Dignity Health hospital network) as a treatment for gender dysphoria. Mercy is a Catholic hospital, and the day before the