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Seventeen states want to end an abortion privacy rule. A federal judge is questioning HIPAA itself.

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kentuckylantern.com – Kelcie Moseley-Morris – 2025-03-31 13:50:00

by Kelcie Moseley-Morris, Kentucky Lantern
March 31, 2025

The decades-old federal law protecting the privacy of individual health information is threatened by multiple lawsuits that seek to throw out a rule restricting disclosure of information in criminal investigations, including for those seeking legal abortion and other reproductive health care.

In one of the cases, the Texas federal judge who has been at the center of several anti-abortion court battles appears to question the constitutionality and legality of the health privacy act in its entirety.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — or HIPAA — established in 1996 to protect the privacy and security of patient health information, includes some exceptions under limited conditions, such as law enforcement investigations. But after the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022 and more than a dozen states passed abortion bans, advocates worried that such records could be used by state officials and law enforcement to investigate and prosecute patients seeking an abortion and those who help them.

Health officials under former President Joe Biden’s administration enacted a HIPAA rule to keep health information private when the patient was in a state with legal access and the care was obtained legally. In order to release information related to this type of care, the entity subject to HIPAA rules must sign a document stating it is not released for one of the prohibited purposes.

“These cases may have been prompted by this newer rule, but they threaten more broadly the entire HIPAA system on which we all rely when accessing medical care,” said Carrie Flaxman, senior legal adviser for Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization.

Two lawsuits seek to rescind that most recent rule, while another brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton goes a step further, asking the court to remove the general rules established in 2000 about how much health information can be disclosed to law enforcement.

“The threats to the 2000 privacy rule would be a seismic shift that could erode patients’ trust entirely in their providers and dissuade them from wanting to seek out health care and be transparent about their symptoms,” said Ashley Emery, a senior policy analyst for the nonprofit Partnership for Women and Families. “A law enforcement officer could pressure a psychiatrist to share patient notes from therapy sessions without a subpoena, without a warrant, if the 2000 privacy rule is invalidated.”

The state of Missouri sued to rescind the Biden rule in January, and the state of Tennessee filed a similar action the same day that 14 other Republican attorneys general joined as plaintiffs: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia. All but three of those states either heavily restrict or outright ban abortion, and if the lawsuits are successful, records kept by doctors and pharmacists in other states could be subpoenaed.

All of the lawsuits are filed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is now under Republican President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Trump administration has so far followed the direction of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which calls for the most recent HIPAA rule to be rescinded.

Amarillo judge ordered briefing on HIPAA’s constitutionality and legality

Three cases are still in motion, including one with a physician as the plaintiff. Dr. Carmen Purl, the sole owner of Dr. Purl’s Fast Care Walk In Clinic in Dumas, Texas, sued HHS because she said the rule creates a conflict with the laws requiring her to report child abuse.

“I consider both a pregnant woman and her unborn child to be human persons, and both are entitled to medical care and deserve the protection of the law,” Purl said in court documents. “I believe … that elective abortions harm patients’ health and public health.”

U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk

The location of Purl’s clinic puts her in the judicial district that has only one federal judge — U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee. Most federal cases are assigned randomly to a group of judges in a district, but since Kacsmaryk is the only one, many advocates and attorneys have accused law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom, who is representing Purl in the case, of “judge shopping,” or finding a plaintiff in a certain area for the purpose of putting it in front of an ideologically friendly judge.

On Dec. 22, Kacsmaryk granted an injunction blocking enforcement of the rule against Purl while the case proceeds, and he is still considering whether to permanently block the law.

As part of the decision, Kacsmaryk also ordered the parties to submit briefs explaining how recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that delegate more authority to Congress over administrative agencies “affect the constitutionality or legality of HIPAA and HHS’s authority to issue the 2024 rule.”

Kacsmaryk presided over a lawsuit in 2023 brought by a group of anti-abortion doctors seeking to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs commonly used to terminate pregnancies in the first trimester and to treat miscarriages. Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of removing its approval, but the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled him in 2024.

Purl added that she thinks gender-affirming care is harmful to children, never medically necessary and a matter of concern for public health, though she has never treated a child with gender dysphoria. In the process of providing routine medical care, she said she could learn that a child was being subjected to gender-affirming treatments or procedures that could constitute child abuse, and she would be obligated to report it.

Purl’s clinic has fewer than 20 employees, and she has been licensed to practice family medicine in Texas since 1986. In that time, she said she has treated many patients who have been victims of abuse and neglect, and estimates she has personally treated more than 100 pediatric patients who were victims of sexual abuse.

“I have treated hundreds of girls under the age of consent who were either pregnant or reported sexual activity. During my career, I have delivered babies from mothers as young as 12 years old,” Purl wrote.

Purl said she has responded to Child Protective Services investigations between 10 and 12 times, and she fears that providing full, unredacted patient records in response to an entity such as CPS would violate the 2024 rule and subject her and the clinic to civil and criminal penalties, which often means hefty fines.

In a response filed by HHS in December, before Trump’s second term began, the department said the rule does nothing to prevent Purl from reporting suspected child abuse, and denied the other harms Purl said she would incur.

“Given the nature of her medical practice, Dr. Purl is highly unlikely to ever encounter a conflict between her obligations under state law and under the Rule,” the department said in court documents.

AGs from ban states are testing newly enacted shield laws

The Texas case led by Paxton has been on hold since February, after the U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to delay scheduling until the new administration could determine how to proceed. U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, ordered the parties to file a status report by May 1.

Attorneys general in states with abortions bans have already attempted to prosecute providers in other states for prescribing abortion pills via telehealth and prosecute women who obtained an abortion in another state without the consent of a male partner. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed an extradition warrant for a doctor in New York for prescribing and mailing abortion pills to residents of the state.

New York is one of 17 Democratic-led states that has a shield law to protect providers and patients from out-of-state legal actions for reproductive care and gender-affirming care, and the state government has so far refused to comply with Louisiana’s law enforcement efforts.

The coalition of states that joined Tennessee’s lawsuit claim the privacy rule harms their ability to investigate cases of waste, fraud and abuse, and “sharply limits state investigative authority.”

Chad Kubis, spokesperson for Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, told States Newsroom via email that the office could not comment for this story because of the ongoing litigation.

“The final rule will hamper states’ ability to gather information critical to policing serious misconduct like Medicaid billing fraud, child and elder abuse, and insurance-related malfeasance,” the complaint says.

Attorneys at Democracy Forward have asked the courts to allow the clients they are representing to intervene as defendants in all four cases, arguing that the new administration is likely to either not defend the cases at all or defend them inadequately. They are representing the cities of Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, as well as Doctors for America, an activist organization of physicians and medical students. None of the judges have ruled on their motions yet.

Partnership for Women and Families filed an amicus brief with 23 other advocacy organizations to support upholding the rule.

“We can’t count on the Trump administration to defend this regulation, given its longstanding record of hostility toward reproductive health and rights,” Emery said.

It’s possible the new leadership at HHS will rescind the 2024 rule, Emery said, but the lawsuits alone are concerning enough because of the threat posed to privacy protections. That’s part of the goal, said Emery and Flaxman — to present the threat and sow fear and intimidation in patients and providers. And the method of launching multiple lawsuits in various jurisdictions fits a pattern that has been observed in the fight for abortion rights, Emery said.

“Anti-abortion extremists’ legal campaign against HIPAA’s reproductive health privacy protections is designed to test out different legal venues and arguments to obtain the most favorable outcome possible,” she said.

Doctor who has been investigated before says intimidation tactics have an effect

Indiana OB-GYN Dr. Caitlin Bernard knows what it’s like to be the target of an investigation, and said she’s still in court fighting new attempts to instill fear in doctors and patients.

Indiana Dr. Caitlin Bernard waits for a question from the Attorney General’s Office at a medical licensing hearing on May 25, 2023. (Photo by Whitney Downard/Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Bernard was an abortion provider in Indiana before the state enacted its ban in August 2023. She reported in 2022 that she had provided a medication abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana from Ohio when the state briefly had a ban in place. She was accused of violating patient privacy laws and investigated by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and the state licensing board fined her $3,000 and reprimanded her for the incident after Rokita asked the board to revoke her license to practice medicine. She was not found to have violated patient privacy and kept her license.

“Now my case is held up as an example of what can happen to you if you speak out about abortion bans,” Bernard said. “I’ve spoken to many physicians across the country who are intimidated by that. They say, ‘Look at Dr. Bernard and what happened to her.’”

Now, Bernard is part of a lawsuit against the state to categorize terminated pregnancy records as medical records in state law that cannot be released to the public. Indiana has historically treated abortion reports as public record with certain details redacted, but Bernard said with the ban in place and so few people qualifying for its limited exceptions, that policy should change. The records include demographic information like age, ethnicity and education level, as well as information such as diagnoses and the date, location and physician who provided care.

“It also includes the county, so you could imagine in these very small counties, somebody could absolutely figure out who that person is,” Bernard said.

Ashley Emery, senior policy analyst at Partnership for Women and Families, said the lawsuits take aim at a deeply needed line of defense against abortion criminalization, and said it will disproportionately affect immigrants, people of color and low-income populations. Trust is already low between marginalized people and health care providers, Emery said, and this would further erode that trust.

“These challenges to HIPAA are designed to take protections away from patients and try to allow anti-abortion politicians to have more control, and I think that power deficit is really important to note, and it should be very chilling,” she said.

Last updated 11:43 a.m., Mar. 31, 2025

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.

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WKU baseball holds youth camp at Nick Denes Field

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www.wnky.com – Samantha Money – 2025-07-10 17:28:00

SUMMARY: During summer break at WKU, the baseball camp energized Nick Denes Field with boys aged 6-12 learning hitting, throwing, fielding, and sliding. Hilltopper pitcher Gavin Perry actively coached, challenging campers with batting practice while keeping the atmosphere fun. Perry joked about losing count of home runs given up, highlighting the camp’s competitive yet enjoyable spirit. WKU director of operations Derek Francis emphasized the importance of remembering baseball as a fun game, noting how the kids’ enthusiasm and positive attitudes remind coaches of the joy in sports often overlooked in higher levels.

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Franklin man charged after marijuana operation found in home

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www.wnky.com – Amelia Brett – 2025-07-10 14:04:00

SUMMARY: A Franklin, Kentucky man, Terry Moss, 60, was arrested following an investigation by the South Central Kentucky Drug Task Force on July 10. Authorities discovered an indoor marijuana cultivation operation at his residence on South Main Street. Moss faces multiple charges, including marijuana cultivation (five plants or more) with firearm enhancement, marijuana trafficking with firearm enhancement, drug paraphernalia possession, and first-degree possession of controlled substances including hydrocodone. The search uncovered several marijuana plants, processed marijuana, two firearms, drug paraphernalia, prescription pills, and U.S. currency. Charges will be presented to a grand jury. Multiple local law enforcement agencies assisted in the operation.

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100 years after John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution, education is again on trial

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kentuckylantern.com – Berry Craig – 2025-07-10 04:40:00


A century ago, John T. Scopes, a young teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was convicted for teaching evolution, violating the Butler Act. The 1925 “Monkey Trial” symbolized the clash between urban modernism and rural fundamentalism. Despite Scopes’ conviction and $100 fine, the trial became a cultural milestone, broadcast live and attracting global attention. William Jennings Bryan prosecuted, while Clarence Darrow defended Scopes, highlighting tensions between science and religion. Though fundamentalism prevailed legally, public opinion shifted toward science. Today, as Christian Nationalists challenge church-state separation again, experts warn the principle requires active defense. Scopes died in 1970, remembered as “A Man of Courage.”

by Berry Craig, Kentucky Lantern
July 10, 2025

Today I’m remembering what Lela Scopes told me about her famous brother for my Paducah Sun story going on 46 years ago.

She said before John Thomas Scopes left to teach science and coach football at Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tenn., in 1924, he explained, “I’m going there because it’s a small town with a small school where I won’t get in any deep water.”  

The skinny, bespectacled, freckle-faced 24-year-old from Paducah ended up the defendant in one of history’s most sensationalized courtroom battles.  

A century ago this month, Scopes was convicted of violating the Butler Act, a Volunteer State law that forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools. His punishment was a $100 fine. 

But the “Monkey Trial” grabbed newspaper headlines worldwide. Dozens of reporters converged on Dayton. So did tent revivalists and swarms of hucksters hawking popcorn and pink lemonade and hustling Bibles and souvenirs, including stuffed monkeys. 

John Thomas Scopes, second from left, stands in the courtroom during his trial for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to high school science students in Dayton, Tenn., July 1925. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

“The State of Tennessee v John Thomas Scopes” was also the first trial broadcast live on radio.

I interviewed Lela Scopes in August 1979, when I was a Sun feature writer. She also said John had worried about what their mother might think of the trial: “He was afraid it would get in the Louisville paper, Mother would read about it and think he was a hothead.”

Anyway, as Mark Twain said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” and now is one of those rhyming times.

“Public education is once again under siege from a sustained effort by Christian Nationalists to blur the line between church and state,” warns A.J. Schumann, a youth organizing fellow with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Like today, the 1920s were times of “rapid social, economic and cultural change,” said David Krueger, professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah. 

Scopes admitted he covered evolution when he substitute taught for the absent biology teacher. (In their zeal to ban evolution, Tennessee lawmakers failed to remove the state-approved biology textbook, which included evolution.)

Scopes believed in evolution and agreed to stand trial on principle. 

The trial, which began on July 10, 1925, and concluded on July 21, was essentially a clash of competing values: urban science and modernism versus rural, old-time Protestant fundamentalist Christianity. 

A historical marker stands near the entrance of Oak Grove Cemetery in Paducah where John Scopes is buried next to his wife Mildred. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Berry Craig)

“The cause defended at Dayton is a continuing one that has existed throughout man’s brief history and will continue as long as man is here,” Scopes wrote in “Center of the Storm,” his 1967 memoir. “It is the cause of freedom, for which man must do what he can.”

The attorneys embodied the collision of values. Tennessee summoned William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska as special prosecutor. A fundamentalist champion, he had been a Democratic congressman, secretary of state and three-time Democratic presidential candidate. 

The American Civil Liberties Union hired Clarence Darrow to lead Scopes’ defense team. Darrow was widely considered the country’s top defense lawyer. He was from Chicago, believed in evolution and was an agnostic.

Bryan and Darrow dueled like gladiators in the sweltering midsummer East Tennessee heat. The courtroom became so hot that the trial was moved outdoors to the tree-shaded courthouse lawn where the crowd of spectators grew even larger.

Bryan got a conviction as expected. But progressives, including liberal Christians, believed science and reason had vanquished “EVIL-lution” in the court of public opinion. They pointed to July 20 when Darrow called Bryan to the stand as a Bible expert.

“There was no pity for the helplessness of the believer come so suddenly and so unexpectedly upon a moment when he could not reconcile statements of the Bible with generally accepted facts,” The New York Times reported. “There was no pity for his admissions of ignorance of things boys and girls learn in high school, his floundering confessions that he knew practically nothing of geology, biology, philology, little of comparative religion, and little even of ancient history.” 

… separation of church and state is not something we can take for granted. It is a principle that must be actively defended, especially in moments of cultural anxiety and political division, when calls to return to some mythic past grow loudest.”

– A.J. Schumann, Americans United for Separation of Church and State

In “Only Yesterday,” his 1931 chronicle of the 1920s, Frederick Lewis Allen wrote:  “Theoretically, Fundamentalism had won, for the law stood. Yet really Fundamentalism had lost. Legislators might go on passing anti-evolution laws, and in the hinterlands the pious might still keep their religion locked in a science-proof compartment of their minds; but civilized opinion everywhere had regarded the Dayton trial with amazement and amusement, and the slow drift away from Fundamentalist certainty continued.”

Allen and the progressives of his day missed the mark. Donald Trump and his Republican Party owe a big part of their electoral success to white Christian evangelicals of the “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” persuasion.  

Schumann warned that “today’s Christian Nationalist rhetoric echoes the anti-modernist anxieties of the 1920s — fear that secularism is destroying ‘traditional values’ and that public institutions should reflect a ‘Christian America.’” 

He wrote that the First Amendment safeguards all Americans “from having any single belief system imposed on them by the state,” a fact that seems to be lost on much of the GOP these days.  

Schumann concluded that the Scopes “trial reminds us that the separation of church and state is not something we can take for granted. It is a principle that must be actively defended, especially in moments of cultural anxiety and political division, when calls to return to some mythic past grow loudest.”

Scopes died in 1970 at age 70. He is buried in the family plot in Paducah’s Oak Grove Cemetery next to his wife, Mildred, and close to Lela, who died in 1989 at 92. “A Man of Courage” is his epitaph. A state historical marker at the cemetery’s main entrance tells about him.

John Scopes died in 1970 at age 70. His gravestone bears his epitaph, “A Man of Courage.” (Kentucky Lantern photo by Berry Craig)

Scopes said not a word during the trial. He got his chance at the end.

After the jury delivered the expected guilty verdict and the judge fined Scopes $100, one of his lawyers pointed out that the defendant had been denied the right to speak before sentencing. 

“Your Honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute,” Scopes said. “I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideals of academic freedom, that is to teach the truth as guaranteed in our Constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.” 

After Scopes finished, the judge repeated the fine. The verdict was later overturned on a technicality, Schumann wrote, but the Butler Act wasn’t repealed until 1967.

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Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.

The post 100 years after John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution, education is again on trial appeared first on kentuckylantern.com



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content presents a viewpoint that emphasizes the importance of separating church and state and supports scientific education, framing the Scopes Trial as a historic battle between modernism and religious fundamentalism. It highlights concerns about contemporary Christian Nationalist influence on public education, particularly critiquing elements within the GOP, which indicates a critical stance toward conservative religious politics. However, it maintains a respectful historical recount and balanced tone by providing factual background and quoting multiple perspectives, reflecting a generally moderate but slightly progressive viewpoint favoring secularism and academic freedom.

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