BATON ROUGE — The former head of LSU's Student Health Center says a university deal giving the Our Lady of the Lake health system control of the facility has led to religion-based decisions regarding student care.

In a lawsuit filed last week, Julie Hupperich says she was fired in May after raising objections to the 2023 deal between LSU and the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, which operates OLOL. The student health center had a long history of providing birth control and sexual health services to students, but Hupperich said LSU is now deferring to the Catholic institution to set policy.

"However altruistic or good the motivation they think they're accomplishing, you cannot force state employees to accept a particular belief system and that's what happening," said Jill Craft, Hupperich's attorney.

The suit says, "These guiding directives which were expressly required of LSU as a condition of its collaboration with OLOL impose upon  the students at the LSU Student Health Center, the staff and employees of the student health center, and mission of the LSU Student Health Center required adherence to Catholic religious tenets and, thus violate the clearly established rights of free speech, association and separation of church and state."

LSU declined to comment. Our Lady of the Lake, while not a party to the litigation, said the deal was appropriate.

Hupperich says in her lawsuit that LSU employees at the Student Health Center must be credentialed through Our Lady of the Lake and accept the system's ethical and religious directives for Catholic health care services. She says that, as a state employee, requiring her and others to adopt religion-based restrictions violated the First Amendment.

The directives, she said, require her to agree that life begins at conception, birth control through non-natural methods are prohibited, and abortion is never permitted or advised. Once the deal took effect, she said, birth control pills could be prescribed only if they were labeled for use in treating "cramps" or "acne."

"As you can imagine with a student population, prescriptions for birth control or sexually transmitted diseases or prevention of STDs should be a big focus of young folks who have become sexually active in college, but you take that out of the equation and make it more difficult for the providers to do their job," said Craft.

Hupperich said LSU later sought her help in seeking a way to provide traditional services but asked her to keep the matter "confidential" because the subject matter was "sensitive."

Hupperich said she told university officials, "I do not think we can make state employees abide by religious directives" and was told by an administrator, "My hands are tied."

Hupperich also says that LSU is diverting student fees to OLOL, offsetting what was billed two years ago as a decade-long $40 million hospital investment in the university. Also, she alleges, LSU imposed a $5 copay on students even though many students would have owed nothing under their own private insurance.

Stubbs said LSU and Our Lady of the Lake have collaborated on various initiatives for more than a decade and "we have always operated within the legal boundaries governing our activities.

"We are dedicated to supporting LSU and ensuring that students receive the highest standard of care," she said.