Rokita drops lawsuit over privacy of Ohio girl who traveled for abortion

Indianapolis, Indiana – After a doctor revealed to a newspaper that a 10-year-old Ohio girl had flown to Indiana for an abortion, the attorney general of Indiana opted not to pursue legal action against the state’s largest hospital system on the grounds of patient privacy statutes being broken.

Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against Indiana University Health and IU Healthcare Associates last year. According to The Indianapolis Star, a federal judge granted Rokita’s request to have the lawsuit dismissed last week.

The hospital system was accused in the lawsuit of failing to secure patient information in the instance of a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana to obtain abortion medications, in violation of both a state and federal law known as HIPAA.

The Star’s July 1, 2022 story did not include any personally identifiable information about the girl, according to Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s attorneys. However, days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of that year, the story became a hot topic in the abortion debate.

After IU Health’s move to dismiss the case was first allowed in June by an Indianapolis federal judge, Rokita filed an updated complaint in July. The state’s initial complaints were addressed by IU Health’s actions after The Star published its initial report on the girl’s condition, according to a request made by his office last week to have the lawsuit dismissed.

According to Rokita’s dismissal request, these measures include continuing to instruct staff members not to discuss patients in public settings and telling them that they should notify the public relations or communications departments if a reporter contacts them before responding.

In a statement released on Monday, Rokita said, “We are happy that the information this office requested more than two years ago has finally been provided and the necessary steps have been taken to accurately and consistently train their workforce to protect patients and their health care workers.”

IU Health countered that it has always followed these procedures and expressed dismay at the assertion that these were remedial measures taken in reaction to Rokita’s lawsuit.

As it has done for years, IU Health “has and will continue to maintain its robust HIPAA compliance policies and training for its team members.” “We are happy that the Indiana Attorney General’s office took the voluntary decision to dismiss the case, but we are disappointed that the state’s meager taxpayer funds were used for this when the court dismissed the first complaint on its merits.”

In May 2023, Bernard received criticism from Indiana’s medical licensing board for violating privacy regulations by discussing the girl’s treatment in public.

The medical license suspension that Rokita’s office was requesting was significantly less than that, and an internal review conducted by IU Health concluded that Bernard had not broken any privacy laws.

Meanwhile, Rokita was censured and fined $250 by the Indiana Supreme Court for remarks he made about Bernard that went beyond the standards of professional conduct for lawyers.