IÂ’m pleased to report that a federal district court in Washington state today delivered an important victory for religious liberty. As I outlined
in several posts some weeks ago, Washington state regulations violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by compelling pharmacies and pharmacists to dispense the abortifacient drug Plan B, notwithstanding their religiously informed conscientious convictions not to participate in the destruction of the life of an unborn human being.
In its
opinion today, the federal district court correctly ruled that the regulations do violate plaintiffsÂ’ Free Exercise rights. Specifically, the court determined that the regulations are not neutral for purposes of deference under
Employment Division v. Smith. Rather, they“are riddled with exemptions for secular conduct, but contain no such exemptions for identical religiously-motivated conduct” and thus amount to an “impermissible religious gerrymander.” Likewise, the regulations are not “generally applicable” but rather “have been selectively enforced, in two ways”: First, the rule that pharmacies timely deliver all lawful medications has been enforced only against the plaintiff pharmacy and only for failure to deliver plan B. Second, the rules haven’t been enforced against the state’s numerous Catholic-affiliated pharmacies, which also refuse to stock or dispense Plan B.
For each of these reasons, the regulations are therefore subject to strict scrutiny, which they canÂ’t survive.
The court also found that the state regulations were “aimed at Plan B and conscientious objectors from their inception.” Indeed, “the predominant purpose of the rule was to stamp out the right to refuse.”
