CVS Health fired a pharmacist who would not fill a transgender woman's hormone prescription April 24 at a pharmacy in Phoenix, according to USA Today.
The transgender woman, Hilde Hall, claims the pharmacist questioned why she needed the hormone medication and denied her request to move the prescription to a different pharmacy location.
"He just kept asking, loudly and in front of other CVS staff and customers, why I was given the prescriptions," Ms. Hall wrote in a July 26 blog post published on the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona's website. "I felt like the pharmacist was trying to out me as transgender in front of strangers."
While Arizona is one of six states permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription based on religious or moral grounds, CVS fired the pharmacist and apologized to Ms. Hall July 20.
CVS spokesperson Mike DeAngelis told USA Today the pharmacist's refusal to fill the prescription violated company policy. The refusal also violates nondiscrimination protections detailed in the ACA, even though it's legal under Arizona law, according to Steve Kilar, communications director at the ACLU of Arizona.
In June, a Walgreens Boots Alliance pharmacist made headlines for refusing to fill a miscarriage drug for a woman in Peoria, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix. Walgreens did not fire the pharmacist, but said it would "provide additional training to all of our pharmacists on appropriately handling these situations in accordance with our policy," according to Bloomberg.
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