Religious Liberty Commission Hosts Sixth Hearing on Religious Liberty in Healthcare

Today, the Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) held a hearing to discuss religious freedom in healthcare. The hearing included panels with testimony from medical professionals, parents and students impacted by vaccine mandates, human trafficking survivors, and social services providers. The hearing's objective was to understand the threats to religious liberties in the medical field from ethical and practical perspectives and identify opportunities to secure religious liberty in this context for the future.

"Today, President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission hearing focused on healthcare, including foster care and social work, and it featured heartbreaking testimony from ordinary Americans who courageously and compassionately stood up to tackle problems like homelessness, human trafficking, and drug addiction," said Chairman Dan Patrick. "Yet, instead of receiving support from their government, they had their God-given religious liberty rights violated, were threatened with long jail sentences and were fired from their jobs. This hearing, yet again, highlighted the need for our Commission and its important work. Unsurprisingly, nearly all of these violations occurred in Democrat states during the Biden Administration. Later this year, the Commission will deliver strong recommendations to President Trump to ensure believers never have their religious liberty rights violated again, whether in healthcare or any other facet of American society."

The witnesses included:

Dr. Eithan Haim - Dr. Eithan Haim is a general surgeon and trauma surgeon at Hunt Regional Medical Center in Greenville, Texas. During his residency, Dr. Haim served as the anonymous whistleblower that exposed that Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world, was concealing its pediatric transgender medicine program from the public. The Texas Attorney General's office subsequently opened an investigation into Texas Children's, with which Dr. Haim assisted in an official whistleblower capacity. Due to his whistleblowing, Dr. Haim was indicted by the Biden DOJ on four felony counts for allegedly violating HIPAA in what was largely seen as a weaponized prosecution. All charges were dismissed with prejudice in January 2025.

Kaley Chiles - Kaley Chiles is a licensed professional counselor practicing in Colorado Springs. She holds a master's degree in clinical mental health and provides talk therapy, specializing in clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality, gender dysphoria, and other mental health concerns. Chiles identifies as a Christian and serves clients who often seek religiously informed care that aligns with traditional biblical understandings of sexuality and gender. Prior to the enactment of a 2019 Colorado law banning conversion therapy for minors, Chiles counseled clients, including minors, in accordance with their self-identified goals, which sometimes included diminishing same-sex attractions or aligning gender identity with biological sex. Since the law's passage, Chiles has refrained from engaging in discussions with minors that she believes could be interpreted as conversion therapy and alleges that this has hampered her ability to provide full counseling services in line with her and her clients' religious convictions.

Valerie Kloosterman - The third generation in her family to work in the Michigan health care system, Valerie Kloosterman served her community for 17 years with exemplary performance reviews. After requesting a religious accommodation in 2021 following mandatory diversity training-stating she could not affirm gender-related statements or participate in procedures that conflicted with her Christian beliefs-she was terminated. Valerie filed a federal lawsuit alleging religious discrimination. In 2025, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in her favor, strengthening protections for employees' constitutional rights.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty - Dr. Kheriaty is a physician specializing in psychiatry and author of five books. He is a Fellow & Director of the Program in Bioethics, Technology, and Human Flourishing at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was Professor of Psychiatry at University of California Irvine School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He also chaired the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals for several years. He was fired from the University of California after challenging the University's covid vaccine mandate in federal court. Dr. Kheriaty is also a plaintiff in the landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden challenging government censorship on social media.

Nancy & Isabella Costine - Mother and daughter who have been barred from school for almost seven years because of the vaccine mandate

Ismail Royer - Ismail Royer serves as Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute. Since converting to Islam in 1992, he has studied religious sciences with traditional Islamic scholars and spent over a decade working at non-profit Islamic organizations. Royer has worked with nonprofits to promote peace between faiths. His writing has appeared in multiple publications and he co-authored an article on Islam on Religious Violence Today: Faith and Conflict in the Modern World.

Karen Amigon - Karen is an advocate for health rights, and for environmental issues affecting our communities today. She began her advocacy journey for health rights in 2019, and continued to build rapport with legislators about the issues that are important to her community. She has a love for empowering the Spanish speaking community of Los Angeles on what calls to action we can take for a better tomorrow.

Jean Marie Davis - Jean Marie Davis is the Executive Director of Branches Pregnancy Resource Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. She has overcome sex trafficking and is an advocate for those facing trafficking, homelessness, and unplanned pregnancy. She is the mother of a nine-year-old son whose life was saved with the help of a pregnancy center. She led Branches in challenging a Vermont law that allowed fines against pregnancy centers for advertising; the statute was later amended in May 2025 to remove provisions targeting such centers.

Sherrie Laurie - Sherrie Laurie is the Chief Executive Officer of the Downtown Hope Center, a religious non-profit in Anchorage, Alaska; it offers over 500 meals a day to those in need and serves as an overnight shelter for homeless women, most of whom are victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. In January 2018, a biological man, who identifies as a woman, tried to gain overnight access to the women's shelter. The shelter paid for the individual, visibly drunk and injured, to go to a nearby hospital. A few days later, the individual filed a complaint under Anchorage's public accommodations law, but a federal court has twice ruled in favor of the Hope Center's right to uphold its women-only overnight policy.

Pastor Brian & Kaitlyn Wuoti - Pastor Brian Wuoti and his wife, Katy, became licensed foster parents through the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) in 2014. Over the years, they fostered numerous children and adopted two brothers, growing their family to five children. Despite a strong record and positive evaluations, their foster license was revoked in April 2022 after they stated during a renewal process that, while they would love and care for any child, they could not affirm beliefs about sexuality that conflict with their Christian faith. In February 2026, Vermont finalized a new policy that will allow the Wuotis to once again qualify.

Bishop Salvatore Cordileone - Salvatore Cordileone is the Archbishop of San Francisco and a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth and also of its Committee for Canonical Affairs and Church Governance.

Dr. Kenneth Prager - Dr. Prager is Professor of Clinical Medicine, Director of Clinical Ethics and Chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Prager has been a pulmonologist for over 35 years. He is heavily involved in teaching pulmonology and medical ethics to medical students, house officers and nurses. His writings on medicine and medical ethics have appeared in medical journals and textbooks as well as on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Prager is a regular guest lecturer in Israel for the Ben Gurion University MD Program in International Health and Medicine in collaboration with Columbia University Health Sciences. He has received honors for his teaching, clinical expertise, contributions to organ donation, and medical humanism.

Dr. Leslee Cochrane - Dr. Cochrane completed his medical education and residency training at the City of Faith Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is Board Certified in Family Medicine with a Certificate of Additional Qualification in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and the Christian Medical Association. In 2022, Dr. Cochrane joined a lawsuit against California in which the state agreed in a settlement to no longer force doctors to violate their religious beliefs by participating in physician-assisted suicide.

Dr. Susan Bane - Dr. Susan Bane is a board-certified physician who has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for over 28 years, including in private practice at Greenville Obstetrics and Gynecology and serving as a clinical professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. She is the founder and CEO of PinkGlasses Consulting, providing health care consulting with a life-affirming vision. After years of helping women deliver babies, she currently serves as the Medical Director for four pregnancy centers in North Carolina, where she oversees the medical aspects of the Centers and sees patients with unintended pregnancies. Dr. Bane serves on the Medical Board for Care Net and Board of Directors for The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, AAPLOG, serving as the vice-chair and advocacy team leader, as well as the chair of Board of Directors for AAPLOG Action.

Abby Sinnett - Abby is a Board-Certified Women's Health Nurse Practitioner and the Co-Founder and CEO of Bella Health + Wellness, a nonprofit Catholic healthcare clinic in Colorado that offers life-affirming, dignified healthcare to men, women, and children from all backgrounds and faith traditions. Bella's OB-GYN practice offers progesterone to pregnant women at risk of miscarriage. When a Colorado law made it illegal for religious healthcare clinics to offer women progesterone for the purpose of treating threatened miscarriages caused by the first abortion pill, also known as abortion pill reversal, Bella Health + Wellness filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado to stop the state from targeting religious healthcare clinics that offer women care in accordance with their faith. The court found that Colorado likely violated Bella's free exercise rights in three different ways.