Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee has signed Senate Bill 955 into law, enshrining conscience rights for medical professionals. This decision follows the bill's passage in the Republican-controlled Tennessee Senate with a 27-3 vote and in the Tennessee House of Representatives with a 71-22 vote.
Known as the Medical Ethics Defense Act, Senate Bill 955 states that “a healthcare provider must not be required to participate in or pay for a healthcare procedure, treatment, or service that violates the conscience of the healthcare provider.” The law defines “healthcare provider” to include healthcare institutions, health insurance companies, and healthcare professionals, while the term “conscience” refers to “the sincerely held ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles held by a healthcare provider.”
The legislation also provides protections for whistleblowers who report violations of the law, ethical guidelines, or “gross mismanagement” by healthcare providers. It prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from taking adverse actions against healthcare providers for “engaging in speech, expression, or association that is protected from government interference by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Actions prohibited by the law include reprimanding or revoking the licenses of healthcare providers over their speech, as well as denying the issuance of licenses altogether. The measure allows individuals who believe their rights have been violated under the law to seek relief in court.
The enactment of Senate Bill 955 comes amid a backdrop of medical professionals and institutions in other states facing repercussions for refusing to perform elective services that conflict with their deeply held religious beliefs. For instance, Robyn Strader, Paige Casey, and Suzanne Schuler, three nurse practitioners at CVS Pharmacy MinuteClinics, were terminated for declining to provide prescriptions for abortion-inducing drugs based on their beliefs regarding the sanctity of life.
In 2023, a federal judge in Maryland ruled that a Catholic hospital violated the Affordable Care Act by refusing an elective hysterectomy for a trans-identified woman due to the hospital's religious beliefs about the immutability of biological sex.
As reported by the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy at First Liberty Institute, Tennessee joins other states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, and Washington, in providing general conscience protections for healthcare professionals. This report was published before Idaho enacted its own Medical Ethics Defense Act earlier this year.
