Arkansas will now allow medical workers to legally refuse treating LGBTQ people

In his statement announcing his decision, Hutchinson dismissed concerns that the bill could make it legally permissible to discriminate against LGBTQ people in healthcare. “I weighed this bill very carefully, and it should be noted that I opposed the bill in the 2017 legislative session. The bill was changed to ensure that the exercise of the right of conscience is limited to ‘conscience-based objections to a particular health care service’,” he stated.

He further claimed, “I support this right of conscience so long as emergency care is exempted and conscience objection cannot be used to deny general health service to any class of people.” Yet, the bill as written does not limit the medical worker’s “right” to “conscience objection” in any way. That means someone could claim that they “conscientiously object” to treating a gay or trans person, and the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act doesn’t explicitly exclude such use.

Instead, the act states that the right to refuse granted to medical workers “does not include the right to deny emergency medical care,” at least as defined by state and federal government statutes. The act does not explicitly exclude discrimination as a reason one might refuse to provide a service to a patient.

Hutchinson then ended his statement by concluding, “most importantly, the federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and national origin continue to apply to the delivery of health care services.”