US Government Sued for Denying Abortions and Birth Control to Immigrant Teens

The ACLU of Northern California alleges that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has granted federal funds to religious groups that illegally deny family planning and emergency contraceptive services to the minors. Further, they claim that by doing so, the ORR has denied the immigrant minors their federal rights and ignored the separation of church and state.

The suit filed by the ACLU details how harmful the federally-funded religious shelters have already been to many of the vulnerable children who are in custody of the US government.

"One young woman—who was hospitalized for suicidal ideation after she became pregnant as the result of rape by one of her 'guides' to the United States—was kicked out of her Catholic-affiliated shelter because she asked for an abortion," the suit alleges.

As a result, she was transferred to another shelter, away from the social workers and other shelter support staff who constituted her only support system in this country. Another young woman, who had also become pregnant as a result of rape on her journey to the United States, was denied placement at a shelter near her family in Florida because the two available shelters both had religious objections to caring for teens who seek abortions.

Each year, the federal government takes thousands of unaccompanied refugee minors into its custody. "Many have come to the United States fleeing abuse and torture in their home countries," the ACLU states in its suit. "Many have been sexually abused or assaulted either in their home countries, during their long journey to the United States, or after their arrival." The unaccompanied children are referred to the ORR, which is tasked with providing care for them. In 2015 alone, 33,726 unaccompanied refugee minors came into the care of the ORR.

The ORR uses funds it receives from Congress to give grants to more than 30 private organizations across the US, including a few religious groups, who help provide homes for the young immigrants. One of those private religious groups is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), an organization that consistently refuses to provide medical care that is not in line with its religious beliefs.

Despite its explicit religious practices, the USCCB received $10 million in grants from the ORR in 2014 alone, which it has spent on subgrants doled out to a network of Catholic facilities across the country. In turn, those facilities are supposed to provide care for thousands of unaccompanied refugee children.

The ACLU alleges that these groups frequently withhold care they are legally obligated to provide—namely family planning and emergency contraceptives. The civil liberties group is seeking a permanent injunction to ensure that the grants given for the care of unaccompanied immigrant minors are implemented without the imposition of religious restrictions.

The ACLU's case cites the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, two laws that led the ORR to instate a regulation in 2014 that would require its grantees to "provide unaccompanied immigrant minors who are victims of sexual assault with access to reproductive healthcare." The regulation, which USCCB vehemently protested, also said ORR would ensure "unimpeded access to emergency medical treatment, crisis intervention services, emergency contraception, and sexually transmitted infections prophylaxis" for any unaccompanied immigrant minors who have experienced sexual abuse while in federal custody. The case also points to a 1997 settlement in which it was decided that the federal government must provide access to family planning and emergency health care for unaccompanied immigrant minors.

The ACLU claims that by funding groups that refuse to provide these health services on the grounds of their religious beliefs, the defendants (the Secretary of Health & Human Services and Director of the ORR) are endorsing and advancing a religious belief and ignoring the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Because taxpayer dollars support the programs, the ACLU says taxpayers have been "coerced" into "supporting and subsidizing a particular set of religious beliefs."