New York can continue to require companies with health insurance plans to cover medically necessary abortions, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other church groups challenged the rule, arguing that the policy’s exemption for religious employers was too narrow and would force some businesses to violate their religious freedoms.
State financial regulators approved the policy in 2017. The state Legislature then separately codified the abortion coverage regulation into law in 2022. The religious groups sued over the regulation, not the law.
After reading the entire decision, all 26 pages, the head scratcher here is why the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany is doing this. Their challenge is, basically, that the Religious Exemption is too narrow but when you read the definition it would almost certainly apply to them
“An entity for which each of the following is true: (1) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity[;] (2) The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity[;] (3) The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity[;] (4) The entity is a nonprofit organization as described in section 6033 (a) (2) (A) i or iii, of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended”
What’s even weirder to me is that not only would it seem that the Diocese already qualifies for the exception that it seems to want but it has never claimed it!
That’s right, on pages 5/6 of the decision the Court writes “Plaintiffs, who have neither tried to invoke the “religious employer” accommodation nor expressly stated that they do not qualify for it, commenced a second action against DFS challenging the amended regulation.”
So what is the Diocese spending all this time and money litigating for exactly?
To overturn the whole thing and make every provider able to deny care.