Virtua Health’s practice of universal drug-testing of pregnant patients is discriminatory and violates patients’ privacy, the state Attorney General’s Office says in a new lawsuit. (Photo by Getty Images)
State officials sued Virtua Health and its hospitals in Voorhees, Mount Holly, and Camden Thursday, accusing the health care system of discriminating against pregnant patients by subjecting them to mandatory drug testing without informed consent.
Virtua has secretly drug-tested all pregnant patients admitted to its labor and delivery or high-risk obstetrics units since 2018, and did not subject any other patients admitted to its hospitals to mandatory drug screening, according to a complaint filed in state Superior Court in Camden.
That violates the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and patients’ privacy rights, the complaint notes. It also flies in the face of accepted standards of medical care, which discourage universal drug testing of pregnant patients partly because of a likelihood of false positive results, according to the suit.
Attorney General Matt Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights in Platkin’s office, are listed as the case’s plaintiffs.
In a statement, Platkin said the action illustrates his office’s commitment to ensuring the rights of pregnant individuals are not eroded.
“Whether it means preserving the right to reproductive freedom or ensuring that a pregnant person doesn’t undergo tests or procedures without their knowledge and consent, we will defend our residents’ rights,” he said.
The lawsuit comes a year and a half after the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed civil rights complaints against Virtua and Hackensack University Medical Center on behalf of two women who were unwittingly drug-tested after they went there to give birth.
Both had eaten poppy seed bagels before going to the hospital, so the tests resulted in false positives that prompted hospital staff to alert child welfare authorities, who then monitored each family for months even though there was no evidence of drug use or other wrongdoing, the women said.
Thursday’s lawsuit was prompted by those complaints and features one of the complainants, Kaitlin K., who thought she was getting a routine screen for proteins when Virtua staff in Voorhees tested her urine when she gave birth there in October 2022. The Hackensack complaint remains pending.
American Civil Liberties of New Jersey staff attorney Molly Linhorst represented the women and filed their civil rights complaints last year. She said Platkin’s lawsuit sends a clear message that health care providers should not be drug-testing pregnant people without informed consent.
“We have heard from dozens of people from across the state with similar stories. Many of whom — including our client, Kaitlin K., whose experience helped form the backbone of this new case — were subjected to unnecessary and invasive investigations by the Department of Child Protection and Permanency,” Linhorst said.
Investigators from the state’s Division of Civil Rights discovered that while 46 hospitals made referrals to child welfare workers arising out of perinatal drug tests, Virtua Health’s three hospitals accounted for nearly 25% of them in 2021, 2022, and 2023, despite only accounting for 9.4% of deliveries in New Jersey, the complaint says.
A Department of Child Protection and Permanency investigation can result in parents not being permitted to take their newborns home with them from the hospital, unannounced home visits and interviews with other children in the household, and parents fearing that their babies may be taken away from them, the complaint says.
“No parent should have to fear that they will lose custody of their children over a single, unreliable, and nonconsensual test,” Linhorst said.
A Virtua spokesman did not comment on the hospital’s drug-testing policies, saying only that the health system meets “the highest standards of regulatory compliance.”
“We hold the safety and well-being of each patient paramount, especially our newborns,” Virtua spokesman Daniel Moise said.
Platkin and Iyer want a judge to order Virtua to halt its mandatory universal drug testing for pregnant patients, as well as civil penalties against the hospital system and compensatory damages for named and unnamed victims.
“Virtua’s practices single out pregnant patients for mandatory drug testing without informed consent,” Iyer said in a statement. “As a result, patients are unnecessarily traumatized and fear they will lose their children mere hours after giving birth. Virtua’s practices violate our civil rights laws, and we look forward to proving our case in court.”
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