Critics of Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, worry Severino’s efforts on behalf of some health workers will reduce women’s access to reproductive health services and could aggravate discrimination against transgender people.
When Roger Severino tells his story, discrimination is at its heart.
“I did experience discrimination as a child. And that leaves a lasting impression,” he tells me.
Severino directs the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When I meet with him at his office in the shadow of the Capitol, he talks about his childhood as the son of Colombian immigrants growing up in Los Angeles.
“I remember a white kid coming up, as I was in the pool, [who] said a racial epithet,” Severino recalls. “My response as a kid was — I was confused, in a way. Why would they say such a thing?”
But since he took over as head of the HHS civil rights office a year ago, some advocates see Severino’s tenure at the agency as more of a nightmare.
“Director Severino presents himself as a civil rights lawyer. And what he has done as OCR director is turn the idea of civil rights on its head,” says Harper Jean Tobin, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality.
That’s because Severino — a devout Catholic and political conservative — has put the right to religious freedom front and center in his fight against discrimination in health care.
In public appearances he refers to religious freedom as “the first freedom.” Since coming to HHS he has issued a rule that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control as part of their employee health insurance plans, if employers have a religious or moral objection to contraception.
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