Religious Liberty and the Executive Branch
2025 Annual Report of the Committee for Religious Liberty
Section IV
Section IV: Religious Liberty and the Executive Branch
In a political environment where bipartisan cooperation in Congress to pass legislation is rare, especially on bills that implicate religious liberty, it has been the Executive Branch—the White House and federal agencies—that has taken the most consequential actions on religious liberty.
This is mainly done through regulations. Regulations are how federal agencies establish and enforce binding interpretations of laws passed by Congress, and they are the most common way that federal agencies infringe upon religious liberty. In some cases, an agency’s authority to issue regulations about a law is explicitly established in the law itself. In others, an agency may argue that the law gives the agency implicit authority to issue regulations. A particular set of regulations issued by an agency is often called a “rule.”
In many cases, regulations follow a pattern in which each new presidential administration reverses the position taken by the previous administration. For example, the Conscience Rule, discussed below, was first issued by President George W. Bush’s administration in 2008, essentially revoked by President Obama’s administration in 2009, reinstated and expanded by President Trump’s administration in 2019, and scaled back under President Biden’s administration in January of 2024.
The process of drafting a proposed rule, receiving comments from the public on it, and drafting a final rule takes months, sometimes over a year. In 2024—and in particular, during a sprint of regulatory activity in the first half of the year—federal agencies finalized many of the proposed rules that had been issued in 2022 and 2023 and proposed a handful of new rules implicating religious liberty.
Regulations on Life Issues
HHS Contraceptive Mandate Rules
The HHS contraceptive mandate has a long and tortured history. At its core, the controversy has been over whether employers who believe that contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs are wrong can be forced to facilitate their use through the health insurance plans they provide for their employees. The rules surrounding this mandate have been changed with each succeeding administration, and they have been litigated up to the Supreme Court twice.[10]
In February 2023, HHS proposed new contraceptive mandate regulations that appear to finally relieve religious employers of any requirement to be involved in the provision of contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortion-inducing drugs.[11] The proposal retained the existing exemption for religious employers and identifies a way for employees of religious employers to obtain those things without the employers’ involvement.[12] This mechanism, called the individual contraceptive arrangement, involved a chain of reimbursements through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance architecture. However, in December of 2024, HHS withdrew the proposed rule.[13]
HHS also proposed new, separate revisions to the contraceptive mandate in October of 2024: requiring coverage of contraceptives purchased over-the-counter, rather than only those prescribed by a physician.[14] On its face, the new proposed rule would not affect religious liberty—it specifies that it does not amend the current religious and moral exemptions that were the subject of the withdrawn January 2023 proposed rule.
EEOC Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Regulations
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act of 2023 (PWFA) has the commendable goal of advancing the well-being of pregnant women and their preborn children and ameliorating challenges associated with having children. Specifically, the PWFA requires employers to grant pregnant women reasonable workplace accommodations for “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” while incorporating the exemption for religious employers from Title VII, an employment discrimination statute. The USCCB supported the PWFA. The Act delegates authority to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to issue implementing regulations.
In August 2024, in complete disregard of the text of the statute and the intent of Congress, the EEOC issued final regulations for PWFA that construe it to require accommodations for abortion, in vitro fertilization, and contraception, and possibly other procedures or arrangements that go against the beliefs of Catholics and other faith groups, such as sterilization and surrogacy.[15] These requirements would most typically arise in the case of employees’ requests for leave to obtain and recover from such procedures.
The PWFA final rule also effectively nullifies the Act’s religious exemption. The EEOC argues that the exemption only protects against claims of discrimination on the basis of an employee’s religion. But nothing in PWFA prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, so an exemption from such claims would be wholly inapplicable to PWFA’s requirements.
In May of 2024, the USCCB, together with the Dioceses of Lafayette and Lake Charles, filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Louisiana against the objectionable aspects of the PWFA regulations. The lawsuit argues that the EEOC’s interpretation of PWFA exceeds its authority under the law, unlawfully misconstrues Title VII’s religious employer exemption, and violates religious liberty protections secured under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
As of this writing, of the four lawsuits filed against the rule’s requirement to accommodate abortion,[16] three—the USCCB’s and Louisiana’s lawsuit (consolidated together), and the Catholic Benefits Association’s lawsuit—have resulted in preliminary injunctions against enforcement of abortion-related aspects of the rule.[17] The fourth—brought by seventeen states—was dismissed for lack of standing, and is on appeal to the Eighth Circuit.[18]
Regulations on Human Sexuality Issues
HHS Section 1557 Rule
Section 1557 is the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Via reference to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any health program or activity of an entity receiving federal financial assistance from the HHS. On May 6, 2024, HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued its final rule revising the HHS regulations implementing Section 1557—a rule identified in the previous Annual Report as one of the top threats to religious liberty in 2024.[19]
The rule interprets Section 1557’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex to include nondiscrimination requirements for sexual orientation, gender identity, and, to some uncertain degree, abortion. This entails a general requirement to perform gender transition procedures when they are within a provider’s scope of practice—for example, a surgeon who performs hysterectomies for uterine cancer patients must also perform the procedure for the purposes of gender transition. It also entails an analogous requirement to cover such procedures in health insurance plans.
The rule applies to all health care programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance from HHS—that means, for example, nearly every medical office or organization in the country, many health insurance entities, and any health plan participating in the federally subsidized health care exchanges under the ACA. Nearly all Catholic hospitals are presumably subject to the rule, and some diocesan health care ministries may be as well. Although many diocesan health plans will not be directly subject to the rule, its application to health insurance issuers, third-party administrators, and other entities involved in the administration of diocesan health plans may pose significant practical challenges in maintaining diocesan health plans that are consistent with Catholic teaching.
The rule declines to incorporate Title IX’s robust exemption for religious entities. Instead, the rule text sets out a process by which an entity may claim a religious or conscience exemption to any requirement of the rule. That claim may be asserted under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or any applicable federal conscience statute, such as the Weldon Amendment or the Church Amendments. OCR has signaled, in the rule and elsewhere, that it will take a narrow view of the protections these laws provide, based in part on what it perceives as a compelling governmental interest in ensuring that any given patient be able to obtain gender transition procedures.
A religious entity that requests an exemption will be regarded as temporarily exempt from the requirements identified in the request pending OCR’s disposition of the request. The process is optional, and the preamble to the rule assures religious entities that OCR will not punish good-faith reliance on legal rights to religious freedom. In such an instance, OCR says it will not seek “backward-looking relief”—presumably meaning that, if an entity acts on a good-faith understanding that it is exempt from the rule, but OCR determines that it is not, OCR will not attempt to claw back federal funds already received by the entity. But OCR would likely impose a forward-looking compliance agreement as a condition for continued receipt of federal funds. Although these provisions improve upon the protections for religious liberty in the proposed rule, the conflict the rule creates for Catholic hospitals and health care workers is clear, yet the rule’s protections for religious liberty remain ambiguous.
The rule also interprets Section 1557 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or related conditions. The rule text itself does not specifically include the phrase “termination of pregnancy” in its description of types of sex discrimination, but the preamble says that OCR nonetheless regards discrimination on the basis of termination of pregnancy as sex discrimination. The rule declines to incorporate Title IX’s abortion neutrality clause.
The rule’s treatment of the issue of abortion is especially opaque. While in one breath the rule appears to establish a general requirement to perform abortions and cover them in health plans, in the next it sets out exceptions that would appear to negate that requirement, at least for Catholic health care entities (or other health care entities with religious objections to abortion). There are ways in which HHS could construe these assurances narrowly. The scope of the rule’s abortion requirements depends largely on whether OCR intends to adhere to the plain meaning of the text it chose to describe the scope of the exceptions to those requirements, and on whether courts will apply that plain meaning.
As of this writing, of the six lawsuits filed against the Section 1557 rule, courts have rendered initial judgment in four. All four have granted some form of relief to the plaintiffs, and two—in Texas v. Becerra and Tennessee v. Becerra—have entered nationwide injunctions against enforcement of the rule’s objectionable provisions.[20]
USDE Title IX Rule
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance (FFA). Generally, each federal agency that disburses funding for educational purposes has its own regulations implementing Title IX; funding from a particular agency is governed by that agency’s Title IX regulations (among others). On April 29, 2024, USDE issued a final rule revising its Title IX regulations.[21]
The main change the rule made is to interpret Title IX to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, based on a misapplication of Bostockv. Clayton County, Georgia and its progeny.[22] The rule also prohibits discrimination on the basis that a woman sought or obtained an abortion.
Because the rule does not narrow the existing regulatory provisions implementing Title IX’s robust exemption for religious schools, it should have little direct impact on religious schools. Under the rule, religious schools that receive FFA from USDE may seek written assurance of their exemption from USDE, but they are not required to do so.
However, the rule’s impact on religious students and staff in public schools is substantial. It may also influence how other agencies interpret their own Title IX regulations, and it may be of persuasive authority for Title IX claims made on the basis of receipt of FFA from another agency.
The rule does not define “sex.” Rather, it includes various protected characteristics within its description of the scope of discrimination “on the basis of sex”: sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Despite comments from the USCCB and others urging the Department to be clear about what is required of recipients, the rule offers little in the way of concrete guidance about what exactly a prohibition on gender identity discrimination entails. The preamble suggests that failure to use a student’s preferred pronouns could violate the rule’s prohibitions on sex-based harassment depending on the facts and circumstances. Regarding use of bathrooms and locker rooms, the rule emerging from the preamble seems to be that students must be allowed to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity unless they agree to some alternative arrangement.
The rule interprets sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of termination of pregnancy, including abortion. The rule adopts a strict reading of Title IX’s abortion neutrality clause, and reasons that Title IX prohibits discrimination of abortion except as delineated in the that clause. So, for example, Title IX does not require a campus-run hospital or health center to provide abortions or a school that offers student health insurance to cover abortion under its plan. But it does prohibit “depriv[ation of] any [woman’s] right or privilege because [she is] considering, want[s] to have, or ha[s] had a legal abortion, provided that the right or privilege [she] seeks to exercise does not require the recipient to provide or pay for a benefit or service related to an abortion.”[23]
The rule also prohibits “sex-based harassment.” While the preamble explains that “a statement of one’s point of view on an issue of debate and with which another person disagrees, even strongly so, is not the kind or degree of conduct that implicates the regulations,” the rule’s sex-based harassment standard will foreseeably be construed as prohibiting, in certain circumstances, expressions of or actions in conformance with Catholic teaching on the nature of the human person.[24]
The rule disclaims any application to athletics. USDE had issued a separate proposed rule governing athletics under Title IX, but withdrew it in December of 2024.[25]
As of this writing, of the ten lawsuits filed against the rule, courts have rendered initial judgment in nine.[26] All nine have granted some form of relief to the plaintiffs, although none entered a nationwide injunction. In Tennessee v. Cardona and Louisiana v. Department of Education, the district courts enjoined the Department from enforcing the entire rule against the plaintiffs, rather than just the provisions interpreting Title IX to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to narrow the injunctions in order to allow the rest of the rule to be enforced in the meantime, but the Court denied the request over a dissent from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson.[27]
HHS Grants Rule
The HHS Grants Rule is a particular provision embedded within the sprawling regulations that govern grants, contracts, and other financial assistance from HHS. It was the subject of rulemaking under both the Obama and the first Trump administrations.
In May of 2024, HHS issued a final rule imposing a prohibition on “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) discrimination on any funds from HHS that are governed by a statute that prohibits sex discrimination.[28] The rule argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, means that any sex discrimination law also prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.
Catholic health and social service organizations either already receive funding or may plausibly seek funding under virtually every statute subject to the proposed rule. Their operation of these charitable ministries presents numerous fact-patterns that could create conflicts between the proposed rule’s requirements and Catholic teaching.
For example, Catholic charitable agencies provide emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence. Some of those shelters are single-sex facilities for women in order to offer an environment that is as safe and comfortable as possible for women who have been abused by men. Instead of offering agencies that operate these shelters flexibility to respond to the unique circumstances and needs of those in their care, the final rule would arguably mandate them to house biological men who identify as women in single-sex facilities. Catholic charitable agencies will continue endeavoring to meet the needs of all who come to their doors and should be allowed the flexibility to provide shelter in a way that best serves those in their care and honors their Catholic beliefs, which include both the call to shelter those in need and the recognition of the immutable difference between, and dignity of, men and women.
Similar situations may arise in the context of the placement of unaccompanied migrant children (UC) and unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs). A UC or URM who identifies as the opposite of his or her biological sex may be referred for placement in a shelter designated for children of the child’s non-biological sex. The final rule could require Catholic agencies serving UC and URMs to accept that referral, even when appropriate accommodations cannot be made, and thereby endorse a view of human embodiment and sexual difference contrary to Catholic teaching.
The final rule adopts religious exemption provisions that parallel those in the Section 1557 final rule. As there, the rule provides no outright exemption for religious entities, but instead creates a process by which religious organizations may seek, but not necessarily receive, an exemption.
Catholic charities serve everyone in need—no one is turned away because of their self-determined sexual orientation or gender identity, or any other characteristic. The final rule, given its uncertain protections for religious exercise, could drive Catholic charities and other religious organizations out of service to their communities, not because they want to be able to discriminate, but because they do not want to be forced to violate their beliefs.
HHS Section 504 Rule
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating on the basis of disability. Unlike the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 has no exemption for religious organizations.
In May of 2024, HHS finalized various revisions to their regulations that implement Section 504.[29] Most of the proposed changes are positive. By enhancing nondiscrimination requirements and emphasizing safeguards for particularly vulnerable populations, the final rule protects the dignity of the human person and counteracts societal tendencies to discredit the value of the lives of persons with disabilities.
However, HHS also finalized its interpretation that Section 504 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, under the theory that gender dysphoria qualifies as a disability. In response to public comments expressing concern about how this interpretation could burden religious liberty, HHS declined to add any protections for religious exercise in the final rule, instead saying it will comply with applicable laws, citing the HHS Conscience Rule as an example.
HHS Adoption and Foster Care Rule
In April of 2024, HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published a final rule governing how adoption and foster care agencies receiving funding from HHS handle the placement of children who suffer from gender dysphoria or experience same-sex attraction.[30] In some respects, the final regulations establish laudable norms. The regulations would, for example, require an environment free of “harassment,” “mistreatment,” and “abuse,” and access to services that support the child’s “health” and “well-being.” Of course, this should be the case for all children.
However, other provisions of the regulations are problematic because they assert, incorrectly, that unquestioning affirmance is the only way to support the health and wellbeing of a child who experiences same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. The regulations would therefore require agencies to ensure that “LGBTQI+ children” have access to “services that are supportive of their sexual orientation and gender identity, including clinically appropriate mental and behavioral health supports.”[31] At the same time, the regulations would prohibit attempts to “undermine, suppress, change, or stigmatize a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression through ‘conversion therapy.’”[32] The rule does not define “conversion therapy” but, in its preamble, circularly describes it as “efforts to change or suppress a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”[33]
These provisions, read together, mean not that children as persons must be affirmed and supported, as they should, but that specific inclinations or behaviors with respect to SOGI—and only those inclinations and behaviors, no matter how confused, inconsistent, transitory, or ambivalent—must be affirmed.
The final rule improves on how the proposed rule would have affected religious liberty, but it remains problematic. It repeats the proposed rule’s assurances of ACF’s commitment to constitutional and statutory protections for religious freedom. Unlike the proposed rule, the final rule defines a category of providers, known as designated placements, that abide by these rules of affirmance of such inclinations and behaviors. It does not require religious organizations to apply to be listed as designated placements, and it says that the rule does not require or authorize states to penalize providers who choose not to seek classification as designated placements. However, that is not the same as prohibiting states from penalizing providers who, for religious reasons, do not do so. In this sense, the final rule essentially shunts the responsibility to protect providers’ religious liberty from ACF onto the states.
OMB Guidance on Federal Award Requirements
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plays a major role overseeing the operations of the various federal agencies. As part of that role, it publishes model regulations for federal agencies’ use in setting the requirements for administration of awards of federal grants and contracts. In October of 2023, OMB published proposed changes to a section of those model regulations that establishes public policy requirements that federal agencies must adhere to in the administration of federal awards.[34]
From a list of public policy requirements, the proposal would have deleted “protecting free speech, religious liberty, public welfare [and] the environment,” leaving only a general reference to nondiscrimination. And it would have added two new paragraphs emphasizing prohibitions on SOGI discrimination in particular—first, a requirement to construe applicable sex nondiscrimination statutes to prohibit SOGI discrimination; second, a requirement that Federal agencies administering awards must “take account of the heightened constitutional scrutiny that may apply under the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause for governmental action that provides differential treatment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
In the final model regulations issued in April of 2024, OMB retreated somewhat from this approach of elevating SOGI nondiscrimination above other policy interests.[35] It retained the existing reference to free speech, religious liberty, and other public policy interests. And it revised the paragraph about equal protection concerns to refer to differential treatment based on protected characteristics generally, not SOGI specifically.
Rules on Other Subjects
HHS Conscience Rule
Numerous federal laws protect the right of organizations and individuals engaged in health care to follow their conscience. Chief among those statutes are the Weldon Amendment, prohibiting discrimination against individuals and entities that do not provide, cover, pay for, or refer for abortions; the Church Amendments, protecting religious and moral objections to abortions, sterilizations, and in some cases any other religious or moral objection (such as to gender identity interventions); and the Coats-Snowe Amendment, protecting religious and moral objections to abortion in medical school and training programs. Courts have held that these statutes do not authorize a private right of action, meaning that health care workers cannot go to court to enforce their own rights under the statutes. The only way they can be enforced is by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), through a regulation known as the Conscience Rule.
The version of the Conscience Rule published under the first Trump administration implemented not only Weldon, Church, and Coats-Snowe, but over a dozen other federal conscience statutes.[36] The rule had two main parts—a set of definitions for terms used in the statutes, in order to ensure that the statutes are properly understood to provide broad protections for conscience rights; and a set of provisions that gave HHS the tools necessary to enforce the statutes effectively, such as a requirement that entities under investigation for violating conscience rights must respond to HHS’s requests for information. The Conscience Rule was immediately challenged in court and was struck down in its entirety.
The new Conscience Rule, finalized under the Biden administration in January of 2024, has positive and negative aspects.[37] On the one hand, it retains reference to all of the statutes implemented under the Trump-era rule, and still provides mechanisms for enforcement, albeit less robust than before. It also notes that protecting conscience rights benefits liberty, human dignity, and the medical profession. On the other hand, it does not define any of the statutes’ terms, thus offering no guidance on what the statutes mean; its enforcement mechanisms have significant gaps; and it appears to suggest that conscience rights can be overridden by a patient’s desire to receive a particular procedure.
EEOC Harassment Guidance
The EEOC enforces the employment nondiscrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, among other things. In April of 2024, the EEOC finalized new guidance—a nonbinding notice to the public of what the EEOC understands the law to mean—regarding what constitutes harassment that is prohibited under Title VII.[38] The guidance states that sex-based harassment includes harassment based on a decision to have (or not to have) an abortion, and on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The new guidance chills or prohibits speech that upholds the sanctity of life, the nature of conjugal relationships, and the created, bodily reality of human beings, such as by requiring the use of “preferred pronouns.” It also requires employers, in the name of prohibiting harassment, to allow employees who identify as transgender to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and other private spaces reserved for members of the opposite sex.
Aside from being an improper interpretation of the text of Title VII, the guidance likely runs afoul of constitutional rights of speech, expressive association, and religious exercise. Consistent with the approach taken in other agencies’ rulemakings in 2024, the EEOC responded to these concerns by acknowledging that the guidance implicates religious liberty and saying the EEOC will address such conflicts on a case-by-case basis.
Department of Justice/Multi-agency Rule on Faith-Based Partnerships
The Final Rule
The Equal Treatment for Faith-Based Organizations regulations were first promulgated in the first term of the George W. Bush administration and have been the subject of back-and-forth revisions by successive administrations.[39] In March of 2024, in a joint rulemaking helmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, nine federal agencies published final rules setting out each agency’s separate but mostly identical protections and conditions for faith-based organizations’ participation in federally funded social service programs.[40]
Throughout their various iterations, the Equal Treatment regulations have stood for the basic proposition that faith-based social service providers must be eligible for federal awards on equal terms as secular providers.
Part of the disagreement has been about what that equality looks like. When HHS revised its Equal Treatment regulations in 2020 to better facilitate faith-based organizations’ involvement, it made a few main changes to the previous regulations, aimed at removing requirements that the regulations imposed only on faith-based providers but not secular providers—such as an obligation to refer beneficiaries to a secular provider upon request, even though secular providers bore no obligation to refer beneficiaries to religious providers upon request. With some tinkering around the edges, the new rule generally reinstates those requirements. A particular concern of the requirements is to ensure that those in need of social services are not coerced by religious providers into engaging in religious worship or being subject to proselytization.
Another area of disagreement has been on the right of religious providers who receive federal awards to ensure that their employees are faithful to the providers’ religious beliefs. The new rule reinstates a restrictive view of the scope of the Title VII religious exemption—under the rule, providers are only protected in cases where they prefer to hire individuals of the same religion, and not in cases where employment decisions motivated by the providers’ religious beliefs are characterized as discrimination on the basis of another protected class, like sex.
Attempted Application to Religious Schools
One of the agencies that participated in the joint rulemaking was the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which operates the National School Lunch Program. Shortly before the start of the 2024 school year, a number of state agencies sent a directive to schools participating in the National School Lunch Program—including Catholic and other religious schools—saying that, under the new Equal Treatment rule, schools must post notices informing students that the school may not subject them to religious discrimination, may not make them attend or participate in explicitly religious activities like worship or religious instruction, and must conduct explicitly religious activities at a separate time or location from the funded program. This conflicted squarely with a provision in the USDA’s version of the Equal Treatment rule that clarifies that these sorts of restrictions do not apply to religious schools.
USCCB staff alerted administration officials to this problem and obtained a prompt response from the USDA, which told states to retract the directive (or, if a state had not yet sent the directive, not to do so).
HHS Rule on Unaccompanied Refugee Minors
In April of 2024, HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) finalized numerous changes to the foundational rule governing treatment of unaccompanied refugee and migrant children in ORR’s Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program.[41] The final rule’s approach to abortion, in the context of female UCs who are pregnant, raises significant religious liberty concerns, as does its ambiguity on the subject of UCs who have gender dysphoria or who experience same-sex attraction.
On abortion, the rule prioritizes the taking of preborn human life by defining “medical services requiring heightened ORR involvement” to specifically include abortion and then, inter alia, requiring the provision of interstate transportation for such “services.” The rule argues that using federal tax dollars to pay for such transportation is consistent with the Hyde Amendment, a prohibition against using federal funds for certain types of abortions. The regulations continue and formalize ORR’s practice of transferring pregnant minors to ORR facilities in states that allow abortion, circumventing state laws that protect preborn human life.
On gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction, the final rule uses language that could be construed to impose requirements with regard to so-called “gender affirming care.” It also lists “gender” and “LGBTQI+ status” as factors relevant to placement of UCs.
The rule’s preamble acknowledges that certain aspects of the rule may raise religious liberty concerns, asserting that ORR runs the UC program in compliance with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and federal conscience protection laws, and noting that ORR “may” (but not “must”) make accommodations for religious providers on a case-by-case basis.
[10] Zubik v. Burwell, 578 U.S. 403 (2016); Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter & Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, 591 U.S. 657 (2020).
[11] 88 FR 7236 (Feb. 2, 2023).
[12] However, for no coherent reason, it eliminates the Trump administration regulations’ exemption for employers with non-religious, moral objections to the mandate.
[13] 89 FR 106393 (Dec. 30, 2024).
[14] 89 FR 85750 (Oct. 28, 2024).
[15] 88 FR 54714 (Aug. 8, 2023).
[16] Excluding lawsuits filed against PWFA itself, and by extension its implementing regulations, based on a claim that the law is invalid because Congress lacked a quorum when it passed the law.
[17] Louisiana v. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n, No. 2:24-CV-00629, 2024 WL 4016381 (W.D. La. Aug. 13, 2024); Cath. Benefits Ass’n v. Burrows, 732 F. Supp. 3d 1014 (D.N.D. 2024).
[18] Tennessee v. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n, No. 2:24-CV-84-DPM, 2024 WL 3012823 (E.D. Ark. June 14, 2024).
[19] 89 FR 37522 (May 6, 2024).
[20] Tennessee v. Becerra, No. 1:24CV161-LG-BWR, 2024 WL 3283887 (S.D. Miss. July 3, 2024); Texas v. Becerra, No. 6:24-CV-211-JDK, 2024 WL 4490621 (E.D. Tex. Aug. 30, 2024); Fla. v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., No. 8:24-CV-1080-WFJ-TGW, 2024 WL 3537510 (M.D. Fla. July 3, 2024); Christian Emps. All. v. United States Equal Opportunity Comm’n, 719 F. Supp. 3d 912 (D.N.D. 2024).
[21] 89 FR 33474 (Apr. 29, 2024).
[22] Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., Georgia, 590 U.S. 644 (2020).
[26] 89 FR at 33758.
[24] 89 FR at 33508.
[25] 89 FR 104936 (Dec. 26, 2024); see 88 FR 22860 (Apr. 13, 2023).
[26] Alabama v. U.S. Sec’y of Educ., No. 24-12444, 2024 WL 3981994 (11th Cir. Aug. 22, 2024); Tennessee v. Cardona, No. 24-5588, 2024 WL 3453880 (6th Cir. July 17, 2024); Louisiana by & through Murrill v. United States Dep’t of Educ., No. 24-30399, 2024 WL 3452887 (5th Cir. July 17, 2024); Texas v. Cardona, No. 4:23-CV-00604-0, 2024 WL 3658767 (N.D. Tex. Aug. 5, 2024); Carroll Indep. Sch. Dist. v. United States Dep’t of Educ., No. 4:24-CV-00461-O, 2024 WL 3381901 (N.D. Tex. July 11, 2024); Oklahoma v. Cardona, No. CIV-24-00461-JD, 2024 WL 3609109 (W.D. Okla. July 31, 2024); Arkansas v. United States Dep’t of Educ., No. 4:24 CV 636 RWS, 2024 WL 3518588 (E.D. Mo. July 24, 2024); Kansas v. United States Dep’t of Educ., No. 24-4041-JWB, 2024 WL 3273285 (D. Kan. July 2, 2024).
[27] Dep’t of Educ. v. Louisiana, 603 U.S. 866, 144 S. Ct. 2507 (2024).
[28] 89 FR 36684 (May 3, 2024).
[29] 89 FR 40066 (May 9, 2024).
[30] 88 FR 66752 (Sep. 28, 2023).
[31] 45 CFR 1355.22(e); 88 FR at 34860.
[32] 45 CFR 1355.22(d)(2)(ii); 88 FR at 34860.
[33] 88 FR at 34836.
[34] 88 FR 69390 (Oct. 5, 2023).
[35] 89 FR 30046 (Apr. 22, 2024).
[36] 84 FR 23170 (May 21, 2019).
[37] 89 FR 2078 (Jan. 11, 2024).
[38] 89 FR 30046 (Apr. 22, 2024).
[39] See, for example, 69 FR 42586 (Jul. 16, 2004).
[40] 89 FR 15671 (Mar. 4, 2024).
[41] 89 FR 34384 (Apr. 30, 2024).