America First Policy Institute Joins Amicus Brief against Veterans Affairs Abortion Policy

Former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Robert Wilkie, and the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Constitutional Litigation Partnership and Center for American Security announced that they are joining with the law firm Schaerr|Jaffe in filing an amicus brief against the VA.

The filing supports nurse practitioner Stephanie Carter’s lawsuit against the VA regarding its new rule that immediately allows elective abortions at VA medical clinics. Ms. Carter made two requests for a religious accommodation that would exempt her from having to perform an abortion but was told no process exists to review her requests.

AFPI’s brief incorporates the experience of former VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, who highlights the unlawful implementation of this rule under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Under the APA, federal agencies may implement rules once they go through a required notice-and-comment procedure, unless they show good cause of an urgent situation where any delay would cause harm. The brief demonstrates that the VA bypassed the required notice-and-comment procedure without good cause and that the VA under the Biden Administration has not proven that a failure to provide abortions warrants emergency enforcement of this rule.

“The unlawful enforcement of the VA’s new abortion rule further proves that the current Administration is willing to ignore the law, violate religious liberties, and force its policies on the American people,” said Robert Wilkie, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs and Distinguished Fellow at the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security. “The very existence of the Administrative Procedures Act is to ensure a lawful, orderly, and proper process in developing agency-wide rules. A process, in this case, that the Biden Administration chose to ignore.”

Read the amicus brief here.

Read the initial complaint here.