WASHINGTON (ABP) — In the first day of their new term, the Supreme Court declined to review a decision by a California court requiring some religious charities to provide their employees with health insurance for contraceptive drugs.
Beginning their 2004-2005 term Oct. 4, the court's justices declined to hear an appeal by a Catholic group to a California Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year. In that decision, the California court declared that a 1999 law requiring employers to offer coverage for contraceptive drugs to employees if they offered other coverage applied to certain church-affiliated charities, even though the law had an exemption for churches and other religious groups.
In Catholic Charities of Sacramento vs. California, a divided California high court said the Women's Contraception Equality Act applied to Catholic Charities because the group provided many secular social services, such as counseling and housing assistance, without religious instruction or proselytization. The law's exemption for churches, the court's majority said, did not apply to the charity.
Catholic Charities also hires employees of many faiths.
The group had argued that the law violated the free-exercise and anti-establishment clauses of both the federal and state constitutions because it forced a Catholic organization to violate its sponsoring church's doctrines in opposition to artificial contraception.
Attorneys for the state argued that the group could avoid paying for contraceptives by ceasing to offer prescription-drug insurance. But Catholic Charities responded that would force them to choose between two deeply held beliefs: opposition to contraception and support for humane treatment of employees.
In turning away the appeal, the justices avoided what could prove to be a sticky church-state issue. They did not comment on the case's merits.
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