Tennessee has become the latest state to enshrine conscience rights for medical professionals into law.
Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed Senate Bill 955 into law Thursday. Lee’s approval of the bill follows its passage by the Republican-controlled Tennessee Senate in a 27-3 vote and the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives in a 71-22 vote. The votes in both chambers fell along party lines, with all Republicans supporting the legislation and all Democrats opposing it.
Also known as the Medical Ethics Defense Act, Senate Bill 955 declares 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 term “healthcare provider” applies to healthcare institutions, health insurance companies and healthcare professionals, while the term “conscience” is defined as “the sincerely held ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles held by a healthcare provider.”
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The legislation also includes protections for whistleblowers who come forward to report violations of the law, ethical guidelines or “gross mismanagement” on the part of a healthcare provider and 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 legislation include reprimanding or revoking the license of healthcare providers over their speech along with declining to issue licenses in the first place. The measure provides a right of action for anyone who feels their rights under the law were violated to seek relief in court.
In a statement on Friday, Greg Chafuen of the religious freedom legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom praised the passage of Senate Bill 955 as he reflected on the rationale behind the legislation: “Patients are best served by health care professionals who are free to act consistent with their oath to ‘do no harm.’ Unfortunately, doctors and nurses have been targeted for caring for their patients by refraining from harmful and dangerous procedures.”
“This ends up discouraging countless young professionals from entering the health care field because of fear that they will be forced to violate their conscience. Tennessee’s MED Act ensures that health care professionals are not forced to participate in procedures that violate their ethical, moral, or religious beliefs,” he added.
Tennessee’s enactment of Senate Bill 955 comes as medical professionals and institutions in other states have faced professional repercussions for refusing to perform elective services that violate their deeply held religious beliefs.
Robyn Strader, Paige Casey and Suzanne Schuler, three nurse practitioners who worked at CVS Pharmacy MinuteClinics, were terminated from their positions because they declined to provide prescriptions for abortion-inducing drugs due to their religious beliefs about the sanctity of life.
In 2023, a federal judge based in Maryland ruled that a Catholic hospital in the state violated the Affordable Care Act by refusing to perform an elective hysterectomy on a trans-identified woman because of the institution’s religious beliefs about the immutability of biological sex.
According to a 2024 report published by the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy at First Liberty Institute, the other states with general conscience protections for healthcare professionals are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington. Last summer’s report was published before Idaho enacted its own Medical Ethics Defense Act earlier this year.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
