HHS investigating 13 states for ‘coercing’ healthcare providers to provide abortions

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today that it is launching investigations into 13 states for violating a federal health refusal clause and “coercing” healthcare entities into providing or performing abortion services.

HHS officials said the department’s Office for Civil Rights will be launching investigations into 13 states for allegedly violating the Weldon Amendment, an appropriations provision that states any state or local government that receives federal from cannot “discriminate” against any healthcare provider that refuses to cover, pay for, refer or provide an abortion.

“OCR launches these investigations to address certain states’ alleged disregard of, or confusion about, compliance with the Weldon Amendment,” Paula Stannard, Director of HHS’s OCR, said in a statement.

“Under the Weldon Amendment, health care entities, such as health insurance issuers and health plans, are protected from state discrimination for not paying for, or providing coverage of, abortion for any reason. Period.”

In a press call, an HHS official described the provision, put in place in 2005, as being necessary “because of concern over the fact that state and local governments were coercing health care entities … both providers as well as health plans and health insurance companies, into covering or providing abortion, despite religious or conscious objections to those requirements.”

The states HHS will be investigating are California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. States will have 20 days to respond to letters sent by HHS.

Officials said these investigations were not prompted by any complaints from these states, though they said this was “largely, I think, because the prior administration closed complaints.”

The Biden administration in 2021 withdrew a notice of violation issued to California by the Trump administration the year prior. At the time, HHS under the Biden administration stated in a letter that the scope of a “health care entity” under the Weldon Amendment was narrower than previously interpreted, finding that churches and religious organizations did not fall under this category.

HHS officials said they are disavowing this interpretation.

“We believe that it reflected an unduly narrow reading of the statute. We also disavowed downstream impacts of the legal position taken in 2021, which imposed certain requirements on complainants of protected parties that were not grounded in the state statute,” an HHS official said.

“And by publicly repudiating that 2021 letter, we informed states and other entities, including those protected by this by the Weldon amendment, that they should no longer rely on this now repeated legal position.”

When asked what a policy compliant with the Weldon Amendment would look like, an HHS official said, “I can’t speculate, in the absence of concrete examples, with respect to what a compliant policy would look like at this point. The statute is fairly clear and straightforward.”

In January, the OCR announced plans to promote compliance with the Weldon Amendment, issuing a notice of violation to Illinois at the time.

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