The defendants nonetheless urge the Court to adopt the reasoning of O'Brien v. HHS, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2012 WL 4481208 (E.D. Mo. 2012). There, the court considered the application of the contraceptive coverage mandate to plaintiffs Frank O'Brien and O'Brien Industrial Holdings, LLC, "a secular, for-profit company in St. Louis, Missouri, that is engaged in the business of mining, processing, and distributing refractory and ceramic materials and products," of which Mr. O'Brien is the chairman and managing member. Id. at __, *1. Mr. O'Brien is Catholic and "tries to manage and operate [his company] in a manner consistent with his religion." Id. The company's lobby contains a religious statue, the company's mission and statement of values contain religious references, and the company and its subsidiaries pledge to tithe the earnings generated by the companies. Id. __, *1 n.3. The company also provides health insurance to its employees through a group plan. Id. at __, *2. The O'Brien plaintiffs brought a RFRA claim against the same six defendants currently before this Court, alleging that inclusion of contraceptive coverage in the company's group plan would violate the plaintiffs' religious belief that requires the "condemnation of contraception." Id. at __, *4.
The court dismissed the plaintiffs' RFRA claim, holding that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the contraceptive coverage mandate substantially burdened their religious exercise. Id. at __, *6-7. Describing the burden at issue as the "funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, [that] might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [the company's] plan, subsidize someone else's participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs' religion," the court reasoned that the burden on the plaintiffs' religious exercise was simply too attenuated to qualify as "substantial." Id. at __, *6 (emphasis in original). The court emphasized that the decision to use contraceptives, the objectionable act, was ultimately in the hands of a third party, the plan participant, and that such a burden was not within the contemplation of the RFRA. See id. (stating that the RFRA "protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one's religion forbids, or forbids action one's religion requires; it is not a means to force one's religious practices upon others"). The court therefore found that this "slight" burden of requiring the plaintiffs to contribute to a group plan that provides contraceptive coverage "has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff's [sic] religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees." Id. at __, *6-7.
Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius - Google Scholar
