Dive Brief:
- The HHS is reorganizing its civil rights office to have a larger focus on religious issues, the Trump administration announced this week.
- The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, which enforces civil rights and privacy laws in health and social programs, said it was reinstating a division created during the first Trump administration to focus on conscience and religious freedom issues. The division was dissolved by the Biden administration in 2023.
- The reorganization creates three divisions within the OCR, including one that focuses on civil rights issues and another protecting health information, privacy and cybersecurity, the HHS said.
Dive Insight:
It’s the Trump administration’s latest initiative regarding religious freedom, a key priority of President Donald Trump’s voter base. In his second term, Trump has created a commission for religious liberty housed within the Department of Justice, established a faith office in the White House and said it would crack down on anti-Semitism and protect the country’s relationship with Israel.
In healthcare, the Trump administration has emphasized conscience and religious objections for providers — especially when it involves abortion and gender-affirming care for minors — arguing providers should not have to provide care if it conflicts with their moral or religious views.
During Trump’s second term, the HHS has initiated inquiries into hospitals for allegedly violating clinican’s religious beliefs, including one last year at a pediatric hospital that allegedly fired a nurse who attempted to avoid administering puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care to children.
Another review was launched into a hospital last May in which the HHS said clinical technicians faced termination after voicing their religious objections to conducting ultrasounds in abortion procedures.
Just last month, the Department of Justice released a report from a task force dedicated to “eradicating anti-Christian bias” in the federal government. The HHS said it was working to reform federal regulations to make conscientious protections clearer for providers and patients, and open almost 20 enforcement actions into conscientious objection cases.
The OCR’s Conscience and Religious Freedom Division first debuted in 2018 during the first Trump administration. Some medical associations at the time pushed back on the decision, with the American Medical Women’s Association arguing the division could restrict access to birth control and pap smears. At the time, OCR was led by Roger Severino, an anti-abortion activist who later became an author of Project 2025.
The OCR announcement comes as HHS is still grappling with its own restructuring, which it kicked off last year. The restructuring included mass layoffs, with the department shrinking by more than 15,000 people between the last months of the Biden administration and the fall of 2025, after the layoffs went into effect.
Unlike that restructuring, the OCR announcement is not expected to result in any layoffs, the HHS said. More details on the restructuring are set to be published in the Federal Register in June.
