Lawsuit: City retaliated against Catholic hospital for refusing ‘body cavity’ drug search

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CNA Staff, Jan 7, 2025 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

A lawsuit filed in federal court claims that officials in an Ohio city retaliated against a Catholic hospital, violating its constitutional rights in the process, after doctors there refused to perform a drug search on a patient.

The suit, filed by Mercy Health in Lorain, Ohio, said police in August brought a “detainee” to the hospital’s emergency room and requested that doctors “perform a body cavity search” to determine if the suspect was in possession of drugs.

Doctors refused to perform the search, the suit says, because they “determined there was an unjustifiably high risk of serious bodily injury or death” if the procedure released drugs into the patient’s system.

Police attempted to force doctors to perform the search, threatening arrest and obstruction of justice if they failed to do so. The doctors continued to refuse, citing a state statute that allows doctors to “refuse to participate in any medical procedure which violates the practitioner’s right of conscience.”

Police subsequently terminated an agreement with the hospital to provide policing services to its campus. That move “thrust the safety and operation of the hospital into uncertainty,” the lawsuit says, alleging “heightened risks to the hospital, its staff, providers, patients, and community.”

The hospital in its suit says its Catholic mission, and specifically its “Ethical and Religious Directives,” allows doctors to “[refuse] to provide or permit medical procedures that are judged morally wrong” and that patients “have the right and duty to protect and preserve their bodily and functional integrity.”

The guidelines exist to “reaffirm the ethical standards of behavior in health care that flow from the Church’s teaching about the dignity of the human person” as well as “to provide authoritative guidance on certain moral issues that face Catholic health care today,” the suit says.

The filing claims the defendants violated the hospital’s constitutional First and 14th Amendment rights as well as its rights under the Ohio Constitution by attempting to force them to perform the drug search.

In addition to the city of Lorain, the suit names two prosecutors as well as the city’s law directors. It also names Lorain Police Chief James McCann. 

The hospital is requesting compensatory and punitive damages for the allegations. 

The Lorain Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit. The hospital also did not respond to a request for comment.

A separate criminal complaint against the hospital, filed by the state through the Lorain County Prosecutor’s office, is also in the courts, the suit noted. That complaint alleges the doctors were required to perform the medical procedure.