Trump’s Health-Worker Conscience Rule Ends After Replacement Set

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ended four appeals over a Trump administration rule that would have withheld funding from hospitals that punished employees for refusing to provide care that violated their religious beliefs.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra asked the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to dismiss the appeals on Feb. 12, after telling it that the agency in January released a new conscience rights protection provision. The final rule mooted the challenges to HHS’s 2019 rule, he said.

Becerra inherited the cases from former Secretary Alex M. Azar II. The plaintiffs, the ...