In a ruling that has “shocked” legal experts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a church in Washington State does not have standing to sue the state over a law that requires the church’s employee health care plan to include coverage of abortion.
The six-year legal battle began in 2019, when Cedar Park Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church in Kirkland, Washington, was informed by its health care provider Kaiser Permanente that it would not be able to exclude abortion from its health plan “due to the enactment of” the Parity Act of 2018, which required health care providers to cover contraception as well as abortion if maternity care was covered. Because of its Christian beliefs that abortion and some forms of contraception are sinful, Cedar Park filed suit against the state in federal court, arguing that the church’s First Amendment right to religious freedom was being violated by the Parity Act.
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After a U.S. district judge initially dismissed the suit due to a purported lack of standing because other health insurers offered plans that did not include abortion, a Ninth Circuit panel overturned the decision, saying that other plans “were not necessarily comparable.” Nevertheless, on March 6, the Ninth Circuit panel “struck down the federal court’s ruling in favor [of] the defendant’s motion for summary judgement, but also struck down the court’s rejection of a motion to dismiss for lack of standing.” In effect, the appellate court reversed its own decision from 2021, which had previously found that the church did have standing.
“The majority’s ruling is shocking,” stated Rory Gray, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented Cedar Park. “It bars the courthouse doors to a church who has actually been required to include abortion coverage in its employee health plan for five years in violation of everything it believes. That conclusion is unprecedented and contradicts what the Supreme Court, other circuits, and the Ninth Circuit itself already said.”
On Friday, Kevin Theriot, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, joined “Washington Watch” to discuss the case. […]
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