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kalikshama -> RE: Arizona law will allow female employees to be fired for using birth control (3/15/2012 9:00:13 AM)
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quote:
Given you've challenged the other poster if they've "read the entire bill", posted a link to the Bill, and are the OP of this thread, I'm assuming YOU have both (i) read/researched the "entire bill", and (ii) can easily cite the EXACT SECTION of the Bill which states/implies the "Arizona law will allow female employees to be fired for using birth control" -- as opposed to being fired for "...lying to an employer's insurance representative in order to get contraceptives paid for when they would not normally pay for them", as the other poster suggested. Please copy/paste the EXACT SECTION of the Bill which supports your OP's premise.
I am provisionally agreeing with MSLA that this conclusion is a stretch and hope some lawyers chime in:
Use birth control, get fired? Yes.
The Republicans who control the Arizona legislature are pushing through a bill that would make it OK for both religious and secular employers to deny coverage for contraception if the employers object for moral reasons.
But apparently that’s not all.
HB2625 in its current version also eliminates the following protection for employees:
“A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source.”
In the most recent version of HB2625 (see it here) that provision is removed (scroll down to the very end).
What does that mean?
According to ACLU of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham, it means that an employer may be able to discriminate against an employee if he finds out that she (or he?) is using contraception.
“I think this just goes to what we’ve been saying about the bill,” she said. “It isn’t really about guaranteeing an individual’s religious liberty but ultimately is about eliminating access as much as possible to basic health services for women.”
The bill already has passed the House and on Monday was approved by a Senate committee.
I contacted the bill's sponsor, Rep. Debbie Lesko to ask about this.
She wrote back to me on Tuesday, saying in part, "There have been no discrimination cases brought forward regarding this issue either before 2002 or after 2002 (when current law went into effect.) We do not single out other prescriptions and other things and say that we can't discriminate against using them, so why single out this one issue? It is not necessary."
I'm not sure that answers the concerns, however. The new law lets employers off the hook in terms of providing contraceptive services. If it also lets them off the hook in terms of discriminating against employees who purchase such things on their own doesn't that open up the possibility of discrimination or firing?
The ACLU's national office says that employers can now "claim" to be able to fire employees for using birth control. (Federal law may well supercede that.)
Arizona ACLU's Abraham told me, "I just wanted to be clear that it's the employer making that claim without getting into whether or not the employer has the right to do so (that may be a more complicated question.) Certainly, though, HB2625 removed an existing protection that would prevent an employer from firing a woman for getting birth control on her own, which is very troubling."
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