The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to rehear a case challenging New York state’s mandate that employer-sponsored healthcare must cover abortions in light of its recent decision siding with a Catholic social services organization.
In a decision Monday, the high court vacated and remanded to the New York Court of Appeals a judgment against a Roman Catholic diocese and other religious organizations challenging New York’s abortion mandate in light of the court’s unanimous ruling earlier this month in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Comm’n.
In the Catholic Charities Bureau decision, the justices ruled that Wisconsin could not deny the Catholic Charities Bureau of the Diocese of Superior’s request for a religious exemption to an unemployment insurance program because state officials thought its work was too secular.
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Specifically, Wisconsin officials thought that because much of the work Catholic Charities engages in was secular in nature, it did not qualify as a religious organization.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s remand in Diocese of Albany v. Harris reflects the fact that the Catholic Charities Bureau decision has now become a binding precedent.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs in the challenge to the abortion mandate, noted in a statement the New York state mandate initially included an exemption for all employers with religious objections. However, the mandate was amended so that only employers with a specifically religious mission could qualify for the exemption.
Since the plaintiff organizations serve all people, regardless of their faith, New York courts sided against them.
In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the New York Court of Appeals to rehear the case in light of its decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The Supreme Court’s Fulton ruling determined that the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, could not exclude a Catholic charity from its foster program because of its objection to placing foster children with same-sex couples.
The New York Court of Appeals continued to side against the religious organizations challenging the abortion mandate even after the Supreme Court’s order, prompting the matter to go before the justices again.
Becket Vice President and Senior Counsel Eric Baxter reacted to the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the matter on Monday.
“New York wants to browbeat nuns into paying for abortions for the great crime of serving all those in need,” he lamented. “For the second time in four years, the Supreme Court has made clear that bully tactics like these have no place in our nation or our law. We are confident that these religious groups will finally be able to care for the most vulnerable, consistent with their beliefs.”
Noel Francisco, partner-in-charge of the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Jones Day, which also represented plaintiffs, said religious groups “should not be forced to provide insurance coverage that violates their deeply held religious beliefs.”
“We are confident that New York will finally get the message and stop discriminating against religious objectors,’ Francisco stated.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
