Background
Cedar Park Assembly of God is a Washington church that religiously opposes abortion and some forms of contraception. The church provides group health insurance covering comprehensive maternity care to approximately 140 people. It challenged Washington’s Reproductive Parity Act, which generally requires health plans covering maternity care to provide substantially equivalent abortion coverage and requires coverage of federally approved contraceptives.
Cedar Park also challenged Washington’s conscience statute, which protects employers from being required to purchase coverage for services to which they object on religious or moral grounds while requiring carriers to ensure that enrollees retain access to essential services. Cedar Park alleged that the two laws together forced it to provide, fund, or facilitate access to services contrary to its beliefs. The district court found standing but granted summary judgment to Washington’s insurance commissioner and governor; Cedar Park appealed, and the state defendants cross-appealed on standing.
The Ninth Circuit had initially concluded that Cedar Park lacked standing, but it withdrew that opinion after the Supreme Court decided Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA and reheard the case. Judge Graber wrote the new majority opinion, and Judge Callahan concurred on standing but dissented from the merits ruling.
The Court’s Holding
The panel held that Cedar Park had Article III standing. Applying the commonsense economic-inference approach recognized in Diamond, the court concluded that Cedar Park’s allegation that the Parity Act made abortion services more affordable and thereby caused the church indirectly to facilitate access to abortion was sufficient for standing.
On the merits, the majority assumed without deciding that the challenged laws burdened Cedar Park’s religious exercise because the church could not presently obtain an abortion-excluding plan that it believed would eliminate any possibility of facilitating abortion. The court nevertheless held that the laws were neutral and generally applicable: Cedar Park had not shown religious targeting or hostility, impermissible underinclusiveness, or a system of individualized exemptions. Rational-basis review therefore applied, and Cedar Park conceded that the laws survived that standard.
The panel also rejected Cedar Park’s church-autonomy claim because the insurance statutes did not regulate employment within the church or matters of internal church governance. It affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for the state defendants. Judge Callahan would have applied strict scrutiny, held that the laws violated the Free Exercise Clause, and directed entry of injunctive relief for Cedar Park.
Key Takeaways
- A plaintiff may establish standing through commonsense economic inferences about how a challenged law will affect third-party behavior, including the use of services made more affordable by insurance.
- The Ninth Circuit treated Washington’s reproductive-health insurance framework as neutral and generally applicable, making rational-basis review—not strict scrutiny—the governing standard.
- The church-autonomy doctrine did not apply because the challenged laws regulated health insurance rather than the church’s internal governance or employment decisions.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves Washington’s reproductive-coverage requirements against this First Amendment challenge while recognizing that a religious employer can have standing based on its alleged indirect facilitation of conduct it opposes. The standing analysis may affect future challenges involving regulated intermediaries and predicted responses by third parties.
The divided opinion also highlights an ongoing dispute over when statutory accommodations, secular exceptions, or discretionary exemptions make a law insufficiently generally applicable and trigger strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause.