A nurse practitioner who lost her job for refusing to prescribe contraceptives has reached a settlement with her former employer. The news comes amid efforts nationwide to ensure employee conscience protections are maintained.
In a statement published last week, the law firm First Liberty Institute announced that nurse practitioner Gudrun “Gunna” Kristofersdottir had reached a settlement with CVS Health Corporation and MinuteClinic, LLC following her termination for refusing to prescribe contraceptives because doing so would have violated her deeply held religious beliefs as a Catholic. The terms of the settlement were not made public.
“We are happy to announce that we were able to reach a resolution of the case,” said First Liberty Senior Counsel Stephanie Taub. “Gunna is pleased with the settlement.”
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Last week’s settlement comes more than a year after First Liberty Institute filed a lawsuit on Kristofersdottir’s behalf. As explained in the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in early 2024, Kristofersdottir had worked for several years at CVS MinuteClinic with a religious accommodation in place that enabled her to opt-out of dispensing abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives.
In cases where a patient asked for a prescription Kristofersdottir could not in good conscience provide, she would direct them to an alternate MinuteClinic location. Kristofersdottir’s work experience changed after August 2021 when her employer implemented a new policy that denied “all such religious accommodations without considering the particular circumstances of the employee requesting the accommodation.”
According to the complaint, Kristofersdottir continued to work with a religious accommodation until she asked her superior if her religious accommodation was still in effect in March 2022. Kristofersdottir inquired about the status of her religious accommodation after hearing about another nurse practitioner who lost her job because she didn’t want to dispense contraceptives in violation of her religious beliefs.
Shortly thereafter, Kristofersdottir’s superior informed her that her religious accommodation was no longer in effect. Kristofersdottir offered several compromises that would have enabled her to keep her job without violating her religious beliefs, including working at “a larger clinic, a virtual clinic, or a COVID-19 clinic where contraceptives would never be requested.”
After Kristofersdottir’s superior declined the alternative compromises, the nurse practitioner maintained that she would not be able to prescribe contraceptives. Because of that decision, she was then terminated from her job.
The lawsuit characterized Kristofersdottir’s termination as a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which instructs employers not to “avoid accommodating a religious practice that it could accommodate without undue hardship.” The complaint also cited the nurse practitioner’s dismissal as a violation of the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992, which includes a prohibition on actions that “discriminate against any individual with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.”
Kristofersdottir sought judicial relief in the form of “front pay, back pay, restitution, and compensatory damages, including emotional pain and suffering damages.” CVS defended its religious accommodation policy in a 2022 statement to The Christian Post.
As he insisted that CVS had “a well-defined process in place for employees to request and be granted a reasonable accommodation due to their religious beliefs, which in some cases can be an exemption from performing certain job functions,” CVS Executive Director of Corporate Communications Mike DeAngelis told CP that “It is not possible, however, to grant an accommodation that exempts an employee from performing the essential functions of their job.”
DeAngelis identified “educating and treating patients regarding sexual health matters — including pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted infection perfection, and safer sex practices” as “essential functions” of working at a MinuteClinic. He reiterated that “We cannot grant exemptions from these essential MinuteClinic functions.”
Kristofersdottir is not the first nurse practitioner who has sued CVS after losing her job over her refusal to prescribe contraceptives and/or abortion-inducing drugs due to her religious beliefs. Others who have filed lawsuits against the company include Robyn Strader and Paige Casey.
The experiences of Kristofersdottir and others have motivated some states to enact conscience protections for healthcare workers. Just last week, Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little signed the Medical Ethics Defense Act into law Wednesday.
The legislation declares “No health care professional, health care institution, or health care payer should be required to participate in or pay for any medical procedure, treatment, or service, or prescribe or pay for any medication, to which he objects on the basis of conscience, whether such conscience is informed by religious, moral, or ethical beliefs or principles.”
A report published last summer by the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy at First Liberty Institute listed the other states with general conscience protections for healthcare professionals, including: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
