In 2004, the Catholic Charities of Sacramento, a social-service organization, brought suit over the Women’s Contraception Equity Law, which required it to provide its employees with contraception coverage. The law made an exception for churches, just as the Obama regulation does, based on the criteria that such “religious employers” primarily hire people who embrace the tenets of the faith and exist mainly to inculcate religious beliefs, but Catholic Charities did not qualify on those grounds. The California State Supreme Court ruled against it. In doing so, the judges cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1990 case Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith: “The right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes.)’ ” A law of general applicability that served a legitimate state interest was not unconstitutional even if it placed a burden on a religious practice. It was unconstitutional only if its intent was to do so. The Women’s Contraception Equity Law had sought to end gender inequity in health insurance: women pay sixty-eight per cent more out of pocket for health care than men do, primarily because of the costs of prescription contraceptives and the health consequences of pregnancy. Its intent—like that of the Obama regulation—was not to punish Catholics but to promote women’s health care.
In 2006, when Catholic Charities and nine other religiously affiliated social-serves groups sued the state of New York over a similar law, the New York WomenÂ’s Health and Wellness Act, which also required employers to cover contraception, the New York State Supreme Court came to the same conclusion.
