Background
Cedar Park Assembly of God, a Washington church, sincerely objects on religious grounds to abortion and some forms of contraception. The church provides group health insurance covering comprehensive maternity care to about 140 people. It challenged Washington’s Reproductive Parity Act, which requires carriers offering maternity coverage to provide substantially equivalent abortion coverage and requires coverage of federally approved contraceptives.
Cedar Park also challenged Washington’s longstanding conscience statute, which protects organizations 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. The district court held that Cedar Park had standing but granted summary judgment to Washington’s insurance commissioner and governor. Cedar Park appealed the merits ruling, and the state officials cross-appealed on standing.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit affirmed. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA, the panel held that Cedar Park had Article III standing because it was reasonable to infer that making abortion services more affordable could increase employees’ or family members’ use of those services, thereby supporting the church’s theory that its health plan indirectly facilitated access to abortion.
On the merits, the panel 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 prevent such indirect facilitation. The panel nevertheless held that the laws are neutral and generally applicable because they neither target religion nor operate through impermissible underinclusiveness or individualized exemptions. Rational-basis review therefore applied, and Cedar Park conceded that the laws met that standard. The panel also rejected the church-autonomy claim because the laws regulate health-insurance coverage rather than church employment decisions or internal governance.
Key Takeaways
- Cedar Park established standing based on a commonsense inference that insurance coverage can make abortion services more affordable and thus more likely to be used.
- Because Washington’s laws are neutral and generally applicable, the panel applied rational-basis review rather than strict scrutiny and upheld them.
- Judge Callahan agreed that Cedar Park had standing but dissented from the merits ruling, concluding that the laws were neither neutral nor generally applicable and failed strict scrutiny.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves Washington’s framework requiring broad reproductive-health coverage while allowing employers to invoke conscience protections against purchasing objected-to coverage. It also illustrates how the Supreme Court’s standing analysis in Diamond can support standing through commonsense inferences about third-party economic behavior.
For religious employers, the ruling draws a distinction between an incidental burden imposed by neutral insurance regulation and governmental interference with internal religious governance. At least in the Ninth Circuit, that distinction can determine whether ordinary rational-basis review or demanding strict scrutiny governs a Free Exercise challenge.