14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor
Restore and fully fund the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division
Printed page 494 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“It should restore and fully fund the Office of the Deputy Director for the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (CRFD) and ensure that it has the necessary delegations from the Secretary to enforce these laws.”
What has happened
- Done
HHS's reorganization of the Office for Civil Rights - approved by the Secretary on 2026-05-14 and effective 2026-06-28 - re-establishes the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (ATE) headed by a Deputy Director for Conscience and Religious Freedom reporting to the OCR Director, in place of the Strategic Planning Division that had occupied that slot. The notice gives CRFD the national conscience and religious freedom program, enforcement of and compliance with the Church Amendments, Coats-Snowe, Weldon, ACA sections 1303(b)(4) and 1553 and the block-grant religious non-discrimination provisions, and the power to promulgate regulations and lead priority enforcement; paragraph IX keeps all existing delegations in effect. The office the Quote names exists again with the delegations it asks for. Funding levels are not stated in the notice and no appropriation is broken out for the division.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The structure the notice replaces is visible in HHS’s own Federal Register SES notice of 2025-05-20, which lists OCR’s deputy directorships as Health Information Privacy, Policy, Enforcement, Enforcement 2, Strategic Planning and Operations and Resources - no conscience division. That is the state the Quote describes as needing restoration.
- The “fully fund” limb is not evidenced either way; a reviewer who reads funding as a separate object would hold this at partial. Flagged for the consistency pass.
- Action
- restore
- Object
- Office of the Deputy Director for the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division
- ID
- 1390