An increasing number of U.S. states have passed laws that allow health-care providers—including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists—to refuse to treat patients based on their personal or religious beliefs. While these “conscientious objection” laws have long existed for issues such as abortion, their effects on LGBTQ people have not been well studied.

As of April 2026, 11 U.S. states have enacted “conscientious objection” laws specifically targeting LGBTQ people. As public health researchers who study the effects of public policies on the health of LGBTQ people, we wanted to examine how these laws have affected the roughly 1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans living in a state where a provider can legally refuse them care.

Specifically looking at sexual minorities, our research found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer adults living in states that passed “conscientious objection” laws were 28 percent less likely to report receiving a first-time HIV test, compared to peers in states without “conscientious objection” laws. These laws did not affect HIV testing rates for heterosexual adults.

Similarly, LGBQ adults in affected states were 71 percent more likely to report being in fair or poor health after the laws passed, compared to those in states without the laws.

We analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the health outcomes of more than 109,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and heterosexual adults from 2016 to 2018. We focused on eight states, comparing two that enacted “conscientious objection” laws during that period (Illinois and Mississippi) and six that did not (Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and Virginia).

To isolate the effect of the laws themselves, we compared changes in health outcomes among........

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