A nurse says hospital administrators in Oregon refused her initial request to start an employee resource group for Christians, who wanted to meet for prayer and Bible study, despite providing similar accommodations for other religious employee groups.
Suzie Logue, a Christian nurse who works at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital (OHSU) in Portland, refused to kowtow to administrators’ requirements that the group be interfaith rather than Christian with no prayer and Bible study allowed.
“I naturally wrote back and said, ‘No, we’re a Christian group. We would like to be allowed to pray and do Bible study and do these other worship activities using campus resources,’” Logue told Fox News Digital.
Logue contacted First Liberty Institute, a religious freedom law firm, which promptly issued a demand letter to OHSU calling for the Christian nurse’s request to be afforded the same accommodations as other employee resource groups.
After nearly a yearlong process, Logue says, OHSU approved the charter for the Christian group to use hospital resources for prayer and worship. Since then, the group has grown considerably as a support network for hospital employees, she says.
“Part of the reason I wanted to start the group is because I was connecting with other Christians at the hospital,” Logue said. “As you can imagine, Portland and working in Portland can be a pretty tough place to be a Christian. And I was starting to connect with other Christians just in my daily work, and they’d say, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so nice to know there’s other … Christians here. We should try and get together sometimes just for encouragement.’
“And, so, what we’ve seen come out of this group, it’s interesting because even despite the challenges we faced getting this group started, it has grown exponentially, a lot of (it) by word of mouth because we lack some visibility, but a lot of people find that there’s more light they feel like when they go to their shift because they know there’s someone they can connect with mid-shift if they have a really difficult patient situation,” she said.
Cliff Martin, senior counsel at First Liberty, told Fox News Digital in a statement on Wednesday, “Federal law mandates that employees of all faiths be respected in the workplace. Even so, OHSU displayed a clear pattern of discrimination and hostility toward Ms. Logue’s Christian employee resource group by denying them visibility on the company website, companywide messaging, equal stipend payment and fair descriptions of religious holidays.
“We are happy to say that, since July, the issues have mostly been resolved, and the Christian resource group should receive the same support every other group receives.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, OHSU said, “Employee Resource Groups (ERG) are OHSU-sponsored and employee-managed groups. ERGs provide opportunities for career development, social support, networking, mentoring, community participation, cultural awareness and employee engagement. There are 15 ERGs at OHSU, including the Christian ERG, which was formed in 2025.”
