Integrating Organizational Legal Cultures: Sex Discrimination in Health Care Settings

• In Event: 374 - Section on Sociology of Law. Law and Culture

Abstract

When the Affordable Care Act passed in the U.S. in 2010, it contained a clause prohibiting sex discrimination by any covered health care entity. This provision, termed Section 1557, is the first federal extension of the right to be free from sex discrimination in health care. This paper examines the implementation and understanding of the new Section 1557 ban on sex discrimination from the perspective of the people designated to receive complaints. These are the employees in health care sites around the country who will implement the new regulations. The designated grievance handlers (my term) frame what the sex discrimination ban means in practice. The research (recently funded by the National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Sciences division as well as its Science of Organizations division) will explore how the designated grievance handlers within health care settings (hospitals, doctors’ offices, and surgical centers) make sense of their new obligations. The paper and conference presentation will explore preliminary data from the first round of 90-120 qualitative interviews with the person designated to handle Section 1557 disputes in hospitals (Catholic and non-Catholic), physicians’ practices, and ambulatory surgical centers in parts of the United States rated most hostile to LGBT rights by the Transgender Law Center (Alabama, Michigan) and rated most receptive (New York, California). By the time of the ASA meeting, I will have collected data from site visits and interviews in both Michigan and California.

Author

• Anna Kirkland, University of Michigan