Religious Bias Fueled Firing, Jury Decides

A Riverside County public health clinic wrongly discriminated against a born-again Christian nurse who was fired after she refused to dispense “morning-after” contraceptive pills, a federal jury has ruled.

The eight-member jury, made up of five women and three men, awarded $19,000 in back pay and more than $28,000 in damages for emotional distress to 28-year-old Michelle Diaz, who said that giving the pills to patients would violate her religious beliefs. The jury found that the firing violated her constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of religion.

The jury’s decision, rendered Friday and announced Tuesday, alarmed supporters of abortion rights and some health-care workers, who believe anti-abortion groups are trying to move the debate from surgical procedures to alternative ways of preventing birth.

The verdict follows a tense debate in neighboring San Bernardino County, where a conservative bloc of officials last year attempted to ban the distribution of morning-after pills before they were told that the move would violate state and federal law.

Unlike the more controversial RU-486 pill, which induces a miscarriage, the morning-after pills contain a heavy dose of hormones used in standard birth-control pills. They are designed to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Many doctors consider the pills an important method of reducing unplanned pregnancies and thereby avoiding surgical abortions. The pills prevent more than 1.5 million pregnancies a year, and hundreds of thousands of abortions, according to its advocates.

In 1999, the Clinton administration made morning-after pills widely available. The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has asked doctors to provide them through routine gynecological visits. But many anti-abortion groups view the morning-after pill as a form of abortion because it acts to prevent a fertilized egg from growing and have sought to limit its use.

In an interview Tuesday, Diaz said her religious beliefs--she was raised Catholic but became a born-again Christian more than three years ago--prohibit her from dispensing the pills.

“When that sperm and that egg meet, that was my child’s life, and my life and your life,” said Diaz, a mother of three. “And that is how every other life is going to begin. When that life starts, I cannot infringe on that. I won’t be a part of ending that.”

Frank Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, the Virginia-based conservative group that supplied the money for the Diaz suit, said he believes the verdict will “send a message to other people like Michelle, that maybe there is something they can do--that they do not have to choose between what they think is right and feeding their family.”

Riverside County officials say they will ask District Judge Virginia A. Phillips to set aside the jury verdict. Diaz was still a probationary employee in June 1999 when clinic officials learned she was telling other nurses who worked at the Riverside Neighborhood Health Center that they would be required to perform abortions, officials said.

“She was fired because it was believed that the misinformation she was giving to these temporary nurses was done in an attempt to subvert the mission of the clinic, which was to provide those types of services to all patients who had requested it,” said Bruce E. Disenhouse, an attorney who represented Riverside County.

Diaz has denied that.

The clinic, the busiest of the 10 public health clinics in Riverside County, is in danger of being unable to operate because of a shortage of nurses, Disenhouse said.

“We understand that she has the right not to want to perform those types of services,” he said. “But she needs to understand that we must have people in these positions who will--because, by law, we are required to provide these services.”

Kathy Kneer, president and chief executive of Sacramento-based Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the case could set a bad precedent if the rights of a nurse are placed before the rights of a patient.

“She works in a clinic that provided family planning services. What’s going to happen to those patients? Why do they have to give up their rights, particularly in a publicly funded institution?”