KIRKLAND, Washington (LifeSiteNews) – A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge by Cedar Park Assembly of God church to a state law requiring all insurance plans that cover maternity care to also cover abortions, arguing that the church lacked standing.
In 2018, then-Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee signed the “Reproductive Parity Act” into law that also requires all insurance to cover contraceptives and voluntary sterilization at no cost. It contains no exceptions for religious employers or conscience objections.
Courthouse News Service reported that the following year, “regulators clarified” that employers could opt out of abortion coverage, but insurance companies themselves could not, leading to a situation where “abortions are sometimes paid for by the insurance companies, sometimes by nonprofits and sometimes by the state government.”
Cedar Park sued in 2019 after its insurance provider, Kaiser Permanente, informed them that the Parity Act meant they could no longer exclude abortion coverage from the plan as it had previously done.
Now, a Ninth Circuit panel has ruled that Cedar Park lacked standing because it was able to find another plan without abortion coverage (reversing a previous Ninth Circuit panel that concluded the opposite), and that “general disapproval of the actions that others might decide to take does not create standing, even when some tenuous connection may exist between the disapproving plaintiff and the offense-causing action.”
“Cedar Park alleged that although Cigna has since offered a health plan that excluded abortion, the plan was not comparable, and Cedar Park has been unable to secure a substitute plan that would accommodate its religious objections,” according to the court’s summary of the case.
“Cedar Park finds itself in a catch-22: It either contracts with an insurer for a health plan that covers abortions (in violation of its religious belief) or it cancels its health plan (in violation of state and federal law),” Judge Consuelo Callahan dissented. “Before the Parity Act, Cedar Park was able to provide its employees with a health plan in accordance with its religious beliefs. Now, because of the Parity Act, it cannot do so. The majority fails to appreciate our prior opinion where we found that Cedar Park has standing, and now uses the new procedural posture of this case to boot Cedar Park from court.”
“The majority’s ruling is shocking,” Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Rory Gray responded. “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.”
“We’ll be considering our legal options to keep this important case going because no church should be forced to fund abortions,” Gray added.
The left-wing Ninth Circuit has long been notorious for some of the highest rates of being reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court of all the federal circuit courts.
