Court rules Catholic Charities must provide contraceptives as part of health benefits_32204

Posted: 3/12/04

Court rules Catholic Charities must cover
contraceptives as part of health benefits

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The California Supreme Court has ruled a Catholic social-service agency must provide contraceptives as part of its prescription-drug benefit for employees, raising alarms among some religious-liberty watchers.

By a 6-1 vote, the court ruled the Sacramento branch of Catholic Charities must comply with a state law requiring employers to include contraceptive benefits if they provide prescription drug coverage.

The justices ruled Catholic Charities does not qualify for a religious exemption to the law because, essentially, the organization is not religious enough.

The Roman Catholic Church—with which Catholic Charities groups across the country are affiliated—officially opposes all forms of artificial contraception.

At issue in the case was a provision the state's legislature included when the law passed in 1999. It exempts churches and other religious groups from the law if contraception violates the organization's religious beliefs.

However, the exemption is narrowly crafted. It allows exceptions only if a group:

Has as its main purpose "the inculcation of religious values."

"Primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of "the organization."

"Serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity."

Is classified like a congregation or denomination under tax codes.

Catholic Charities meets none of those requirements. The court noted the group both hires and provides services to people of many faiths other than Catholicism, and it does not include overt religious instruction or evangelism as part of its service programs.

Attorneys for the charity argued the state exemption discriminated against the Catholic Church—even though the church originally supported its inclusion in the bill—because it defined what sorts of groups qualified as "religious" too narrowly. Catholic social teaching, they contended, requires that Catholics provide food, clothing and other benefits to the needy with no religious strings attached.

But the court's majority appealed to previous federal court decisions—including a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1990—in saying that the state was within its rights to force Catholic Charities to comply because the law treated it equally with secular entities.

"The law treats some Catholic organizations more favorably than all other employers by exempting them; non-exempt Catholic organizations are treated the same as all other employers," said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, writing for the majority.

Werdegar also quoted a state legislator's comments from debate on the law's passage: "The intention of the religious exemption in both these bills is an intention to provide for exemption for what is religious activity. The more secular the activity gets, the less religiously based it is, and the more we believe that they should be required to cover prescription drug benefits for contraception."

However, the justices did say the third requirement for an organization to qualify for the religious exemption—that it must serve primarily those of its own religion—is "problematic."

"To imagine a legitimate purpose for such a requirement is difficult," Werdegar wrote. "Reading the provision literally, a hypothetical soup kitchen run entirely by the ministers of a church, which inculcates religious values to those who come to eat…would lose its claim to an exemption from the (requirement) if it chose to serve the hungry without discrimination instead of serving co-religionists only. The legislature may wish to address this problem."

In a separate opinion concurring with the majority, Justice Joyce Kennard raised a concern about another of the state's criteria for qualifying as a religious organization.

"I have serious doubts that the First Amendment, as construed by the United States Supreme Court, allows California to limit its religious-employer exemption to religious entities that have as their purpose the inculcation of religious values," Kennard wrote, noting that some religious organizations "like Catholic Charities … are organized for the purpose of feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and providing shelter to the homeless."

The lone objector to the court's judgment in the case was Justice Janice Rogers Brown. In a lengthy dissenting opinion, she said the state was overstepping its bounds with regard to religion in the case.

Brown said the majority's opinion begs this question: "May the government determine what parts of bona fide religious organizations are religious and what parts are secular? And, in particular, may the government make such distinctions in order to infringe the religious freedom of that portion of the organization the government characterizes as secular?"

Rogers continued, "A substantial amount of federal case law supports Catholic Charities' claim that the legislature's attempt to draw distinctions between the religious and secular activities of a single religious entity is an impermissible government entanglement in religion. I am inclined to agree."