PHARMACIST STEVE

https://www.fox9.com/news/pharmacist-prescription-refusal-lawsuit-highlights-human-religious-rights

(FOX 9) – Two Twin Cities pharmacists say they lost work when they refused to fulfill prescriptions for gender transition and emergency contraception.

Refusal on faith

Pharmacists won’t fulfill:

They cited religious objections, but one of them says she was fired and the other had hours reduced. 

So now they’re suing Walgreens and the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy.

Walgreens pharmacists Dora Ig-Izevbekhai and Rachel Scott say their Christian religion guides them against filling doctor’s prescriptions for gender transition and abortion medications.

For years, they say Walgreens let them hand off those patients to other pharmacists.

“Both Minnesota and the federal government of the United States have statutes that require employers to accommodate the religious practices of their employees if it can be done so without posing an undue hardship on the employer’s business,” said plaintiff’s attorney Nicholas Nelson of the Upper Midwest Law Center.

Can they or can’t they?

An evolving law:

But in 2022 and 2023, the pharmacists say Walgreens told them their religious accommodation was illegal under Minnesota law.

By that time, state courts had ruled against a Minnesota woman who claimed discrimination when an Aitkin County pharmacist denied her emergency contraception when her nearest option was at least an hour away through a snowstorm.

But the state appeals court ruled in her favor in 2024 and the ruling has stuck. She was awarded about $673,000 in attorney’s fees in June 2025.

Rights rivalry

Who would be hurt?:

Transgender advocates say when a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription, it can be dangerous.

“It can delay necessary care, put a patient’s health at risk, and send the harmful message that they don’t deserve to be treated with dignity,” said Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at A4TE.

Attorneys who fought the contraception case tell FOX 9 the state’s Human Rights Act would also apply to gender transition drugs.

“People deserve access to the healthcare they need, including prescriptions, and should be able to fill those prescriptions free from discrimination or bias,” said a statement sent to us by Gender Justice, which helped in the discrimination case. “We will continue to stand for the rights of all patients to receive respectful, unbiased care.”

But Nelson says the new case he filed on behalf of the pharmacists isn’t quite the same.

“They were not telling people, no you can’t have these drugs,” he said. “They were just handing the prescription to another pharmacist or otherwise making arrangements for the prescription to get filled.”

So the potential conflict between the state’s Human Rights Act and the constitutional freedom of religion isn’t necessarily put to the test here.

Nelson acknowledged there could be a situation where it’s a one-pharmacist town or there’s a snowstorm again, but that’s not what happened with his clients.

Filed under: General Problems