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Saturday, July 11, 2009
CTA9 rejects pharmacists' religious-conscience claims
The Los Angeles Times has the story, here, about the decision in Storman's v. Selecky:
The right to freely exercise one's religion "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability," the 9th Circuit panel wrote.
"Any refusal to dispense -- regardless of whether it is motivated by religion, morals, conscience, ethics, discriminatory prejudices, or personal distaste for a patient -- violates the rules," the panel said.
At First Things, Wesley Smith warns that (among other things) the decision "also means that all pharmacists in the state must dispense death to terminally ill patients in Washington who receive lethal prescriptions." Paul Moses, at Commonweal, weighs in here, (Rob Vischer, readers might recall, touched on this general issue during his recent guest-blogging stint; here is an earlier post of mine on the topic.)
Any reactions to or thoughts about the case?
UPDATE: In a fit of inexcusable blog-myopia, I missed Howard's earlier -- as in, from yesterday -- post on this case.
Posted by Rick Garnett on July 11, 2009 at 02:28 PM in Constitutional thoughts | Permalink
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Comments
Yes, they must dispense death, just as they would if they were selling guns, knives or ammonium nitrate.
Physicians and pharmacists need to get used to the idea that they are servants of the public!
Posted by: Jimbino | Jul 11, 2009 2:47:02 PM
My two cents here:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2009/07/court-of-appeals-reverses-injunction-against-washington-pharmacist-regs.html
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Jul 11, 2009 3:15:30 PM
I wrote a bit about this last month too, though less about the con law (and other) issues raised by the 9th Cir case, and more about whether it makes sense to single out pharmacists for religious objections in the workplace last month:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2009/06/principle-politics-and-pharmacist-protection-laws.html
Posted by: Dave | Jul 12, 2009 3:01:11 AM