CVS fires pharmacist for refusing hormone medication to transgender customer

The announcement came after Hall shared her experience this week in a blog post with the American Civil Liberties Union. She had gone to CVS to receive the hormone therapy in April for the first time, but the pharmacist refused to fill one of the prescriptions.

“He did not give me a clear reason for the refusal,” she wrote. “He just kept asking, loudly and in front of other CVS staff and customers, why I was given the prescriptions.”

Hall said that she nearly started crying and felt as though the pharmacist was trying to out her as transgender in front of other customers. The pharmacist would not return the prescription note so she was unable to take it elsewhere to get filled. Her doctor tried to call the CVS pharmacy in turn, but the pharmacist still refused to fill it, so Hall’s prescriptions were transferred to a Walgreens instead.

Hall’s calls to CVS corporate went unanswered so she filed a complaint with the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy and asked CVS to take action and apologize publicly.

“No healthcare worker should rely on personal beliefs to reject decisions made by doctors and their transgender patients about medically necessary care,” she wrote.

CVS said in a statement that the lack of follow up on their end to the complaint was attributable to an “unintentional oversight” and that it was taking steps to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

After CVS made its announcement about the firing, the ACLU updated the blog post from Hall, saying she had spoken to a CVS representative and appreciated that the company had taken her experience seriously.