On Friday, the Washington State Senate approved a bill 48 to 2, authorizing religious objection to an autopsy. The bill was brought to the chamber by a number of Jewish organizations, including Chabad representative to Tacoma, Rabbi Zalman Heber, after trying to prevent an autopsy following the tragic death of Dr. Brian Grobois. 

In early December 2011, Brian Grobois of New Rochelle, NY, died while snowshoeing on Mount Rainier. The ensuing battle between Grobois’s family and the medical examiner’s office over whether to conduct an autopsy became the center of a political debate in Washington’s Pierce County and a nightmare for the Grobois family.  

On December 12, two days after Grobois’ family reported him missing, his body was recovered and transported to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office where medical examiner Dr. Thomas Clark called for an autopsy due to the “unnatural” circumstances of Grobois’ death.

The family, with the help of Rabbi Heber, requested that the body not be autopsied because the ranger that discovered the body and two other doctors had declared the cause of death as “hypothermia/cardiac arrest.” Dr. Clark persisted.

 Washington state law gives medical examiners broad authority to take possession of bodies and investigate their death, including performing autopsies. The new legislation, if passed, will finally allow a family’s objections to an autopsy based on religious objections, as is the case in 11 states, including New Jersey and New York, that do have such legislation.

Grobois, 54, was an active member of the New Rochelle Young Israel community. His family planned a burial around Jewish law, which dictates that the body be returned to the earth as quickly as possible, complete, with all bones, tissue, and organs intact. Autopsies, according to most Jewish authorities, including Rabbi Heber, are forbidden.

"It is a great desecration to the human body to subject it to dissection and therefore an autopsy would have been against the family's deeply held religious beliefs,” he said.

It took three days for a judge to uphold an appeal barring Pierce County’s medical examiner from conducting an autopsy on Grobois’ body. The incident is supposedly a first for Pierce County, and it attracted the attention of Jewish leaders from around the country, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, and even well-known consumer-rights attorney Erin Brockovich.

When Grobois’ body was finally released, after much wrangling with authorities, his family flew with his body to Israel, where he was buried, according to Jewish law.

The attention that the case drew resulted in the creation of Senate Bill 6068 by Sen. Adam Kline (D), which would prevent a medical examiner or coroner from performing an autopsy for at least 48 hours if a close friend or relative raises an objection on religious grounds. The “timeout” would enable for mediation between the coroner and the family, and subsequently also would enable family or friends to ask a court to determine of the autopsy is necessary. If there is no public necessity for the autopsy, which is defined in the bill as meaning that the autopsy is essential in conducting an investigation of a homicide or the discovery of the cause is important and necessary for safety of public health, then an objection to the autopsy on religious grounds is considered valid.

“The purpose of this bill,” Sen. Kline said, “is to require the coroners to do what they have done until this day more-or-less by custom or habit, but not according to law. This has not been codified. I think it would be tragic if we had a collision between religious considerations and law enforcement considerations. The purpose of this is to balance the two.”

James McMahon of the Washington Association of County Officials, who spoke out against the bill, said that religious objections come up at least once a week in most medical examiners’ offices and that mediation between the examiner and the family usually results in an agreement about the invasiveness of the autopsy that respects the religious beliefs of the family.

In response to questions from Sen. Kline about safeguarding the balance between the law and religious freedom and cases like Grobois’, McMahon said, “The process isn’t perfect.”

The bill was withdrawn and revised during a meeting with local Jewish leaders and medical examiners in late January. Before it becomes law, itrequires passage by the Washington House of Representatives, as well as the Governor's signature.