{"id":881,"date":"2008-08-19T16:26:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T16:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr.php"},"modified":"2008-08-19T16:26:37","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T16:26:37","slug":"calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","title":{"rendered":"Calif. Court: Doctors Can&#8217;t Discriminate Based on Sex Orientation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\nCalifornia&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled Monday (Aug. 18) that doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians even if they believe their religious freedom will be violated during a course of treatment.<br \/>\nThe case involved a San Diego County lesbian, Guadalupe Benitez, who informed doctors that she and her partner wanted to pursue fertility treatments. Two doctors in a Vista, Calif., practice said that their religious beliefs would prevent them from performing an artificial insemination for Benitez.<br \/>\nBenitez sued, citing California&#8217;s civil rights act.<br \/>\nThe Constitution&#8217;s &#8220;right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the Act&#8217;s antidiscrimination requirements even if compliance poses an incidental conflict with defendants&#8217; religious beliefs,&#8221; wrote Associate Justice Joyce L. Kennard in a unanimous decision.<br \/>\nThe judge said the civil rights act imposes &#8220;certain antidiscrimination obligations&#8221; on business establishments, including medical groups.<br \/>\nOne of the doctors, Christine Brody, said her religious objection was because Benitez was not married. But Benitez argued that Brody objected to performing the procedure because Benitez is a lesbian.<br \/>\nThe judge said the doctors could refuse to perform the medical procedure for all patients or refer them to a physician in their practice who did not hold the same religious objections.<br \/>\nLawyers for the doctors are considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service California&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled Monday (Aug. 18) that doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians even if they believe their religious freedom will be violated during a course of treatment. The case involved a San Diego County lesbian, Guadalupe Benitez, who informed doctors that she and her partner&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Calif. Court: Doctors Can&#039;t Discriminate Based on Sex Orientation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Calif. Court: Doctors Can&#039;t Discriminate Based on Sex Orientation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service California&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled Monday (Aug. 18) that doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians even if they believe their religious freedom will be violated during a course of treatment. The case involved a San Diego County lesbian, Guadalupe Benitez, who informed doctors that she and her partner&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-19T16:26:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Calif. Court: Doctors Can't Discriminate Based on Sex Orientation","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Calif. Court: Doctors Can't Discriminate Based on Sex Orientation","og_description":"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service California&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled Monday (Aug. 18) that doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians even if they believe their religious freedom will be violated during a course of treatment. The case involved a San Diego County lesbian, Guadalupe Benitez, who informed doctors that she and her partner&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-08-19T16:26:37+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/calif-court-doctors-cant-discr","name":"Calif. 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