RFK Jr. to Reorganize Civil Rights Office With Religion Focus

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday that it plans to reorganize the agency tasked with enforcing nondiscrimination protections related to privacy, civil rights, and religious freedom in healthcare, a shift from the Biden administration’s focus with the office.

The planned move would split the HHS Office of Civil Rights into three divisions: conscience and religious freedom, civil rights, and health information privacy, data, and cybersecurity.

“This reorganization re-institutes a structure that rightly prioritizes civil rights and conscience and religious freedom alongside health information privacy and security,” HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Paula M. Stannard said in a statement. “All three areas are deserving of subject-matter expertise and distinct senior executive leadership for OCR to best serve the American people.”

The agency said the revised structure will allow it to “advance the protection of conscience rights, address race-based discrimination in a color-blind manner, eradicate antisemitism and anti-Christian bias, and restore biological truth.”

One of President Donald Trump’s first actions when taking office last year was to rescind a Biden-era executive order that extended antidiscrimination protection on the basis of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The Trump administration has also used the office to reinforce conscience protections for providers who say issues such as abortion or gender-affirming care conflict with their religious principles.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attempted to reshape his department to better align with the Trump administration’s priorities and to trim what he considers redundancies across agencies, but has been limited by the courts and Congress. His proposed consolidation of multiple agencies under the Administration for a Healthy America remains in limbo due to court challenges, and Congress did not fund the AHM.

The changes to the OCR seek to realign the agency with changes made to the agency under President Donald Trump’s first term. The HHS created an OCR division for conscience and religious freedom in 2018. Former President Joe Biden reshuffled the OCR in 2023, combining the conscience and religious freedom and civil rights divisions under what it called the policy division.

The new proposal would eliminate the existing strategic policy division and reshuffle those personnel and activities under the other umbrellas. The conscience and religious freedom section will be tasked will handling high-profile investigations and issuing rules, guidance documents, and leading outreach and training.

A high-ranking HHS official told reporters on Monday that if the courts interpret discrimination on the basis of sex to include a bar on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, OCR will enforce that interpretation of the law.

The OCR said it would provide more information about the reorganization through a notice in the Federal Register that will be published in June.

Personnel Roadblocks

Unlike last year’s proposed department-wide reorganization, the agency said this reshuffling is not expected to result in reductions in force.

The HHS would hire investigators and policy personnel for the conscience and religious freedom division including a senior executive to lead the division, according to a high-ranking HHS official.

States challenged HHS after it announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees and restructure agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.

Following a July Supreme Court ruling in its favor, HHS began formally implementing its planned reductions in force. But multiple lawsuits regarding the reorganization and layoffs continue this year.

Last week, HHS began laying off additional employees.