CHILD files second suit against payments for Christian Science nursing

CHILD and two of its Minnesota members filed a second suit against the federal government on August 7, the day after President Clinton signed a bill mandating Medicare and Medicaid payments for "religious nonmedical health care."

The bill obviates a 1996 federal court ruling won by CHILD in that it changes the statutes ruled unconstitutional.

The taxpayers' suit asks the federal court in Minneapolis to rule the new statutes mandating such payments unconstitutional. "The amended statutes," CHILD's complaint charges, "effectively replicate the prior unconstitutional provisions, by adopting religious eligibility criteria applicable only to those persons and institutions holding religious beliefs about the effectiveness of religious methods of healing and abstinence from medicine, thereby effectively discriminating among religious sects. The eligibility criteria in the amended statutes also discriminate in favor of religious adherents and against those who have objections to medical care based upon convictions which are non-religious, but sincerely held, and against those who simply choose for non-religious reasons to forego medical treatment. The amended statutes further restrict the receipt of benefits by religious medical objectors, to receiving them only in institutions organized on the basis of religious belief, a prohibited ceding of civil authority to a religious institution."

Like the statutes declared unconstitutional, the new statutes allow Medicare/Medicaid payments to nursing homes that admit only members of one church, require all the patients to pay for prayers by church-accredited spiritual healers, and hire only members of one church.

CHILD also stated that "the only known institutions who qualify to receive payment under the amended statutes, Christian Science sanatoria, are pervasively sectarian and serve a core religious function, which may not be financed, supported, endorsed, or promoted by use of the taxing and spending power of the United States."

The Christian Science church has again entered the case as a defendant-intervenor.

Attorney Robert Bruno of Burnsville, Minnesota, represents CHILD in this action.