SAN FRANCISCO — Two weeks after deciding same-sex couples are entitled to marry, the California Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to rule that physicians have no constitutional right to refuse medical treatment to gays on grounds it would violate their religious beliefs.
The justices' inclination emerged as the state high court heard arguments in a case that pits the religious freedom of physicians against the right of gays to be free from discrimination.
Several justices suggested during Wednesday's hearing that they would rule that religion was not a legal justification for two Christian physicians in San Diego County who declined to perform an intrauterine insemination for Lupita Benitez, a lesbian who sought to become pregnant in 1999.
Justice Carol A. Corrigan, who voted against same-sex marriage, appeared strongly in favor of Benitez's right to medical treatment.
Corrigan noted that the physicians were running a business.
She added that if they did not want to perform certain procedures, they could take up a different line of work.
She questioned whether it was appropriate for a doctor to tell a patient, "I am not going to do it for you because of who you are."
Chief Justice Ronald M. George suggested that the issue was not about whether doctors could refuse to perform a procedure at all but whether certain patients could be deprived a treatment that others received.
He asked a lawyer for the doctors whether they could refuse to treat patients of their ethnic backgrounds.
"Would that pass muster?" he asked.
Kenneth R. Pedroza, who represented the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, said he was unaware of any religious beliefs that would justify disparate treatment for people of different ethnic backgrounds.
But if a doctor had such a sincerely held religious belief, then "the answer would seem to be yes," Pedroza told George.
Jennifer C. Pizer, who represented Benitez for Lambda Legal, told the court that doctors may not decide which patients can receive certain treatments.
"If a service is being offered to some, it needs to be offered to others in a nondiscriminatory way," Pizer said.
Benitez said in her lawsuit that the doctors told her that their religious views and those of the staff prevented them from artificially inseminating her with a donor's semen.
