Employees of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles are taking their fight against state-mandated abortion coverage in their insurance plans to the federal government.
The Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation filed a formal complaint Thursday with the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of seven employees of the Catholic university, telling the department that federal law bars states from discriminating against insurance providers who offer plans without abortion coverage.
The alliance on Thursday also told Pennsylvania State University it should reverse a decision to remove Bibles from hotel rooms that was prompted by an atheist group’s earlier complaint that allowing Bibles violated the First Amendment.
The California Department of Managed Health Care did an about-face last month and rejected insurance plans it had already approved for Loyola and Santa Clara University, saying they must cover all abortion, not just elective abortion. Its rationale was that all abortions are “medically necessary.”
The so-called Weldon Amendment blocks states from receiving certain federal funds if they discriminate against insurance providers for not covering abortion.
The California department “purports to be interpreting and applying the law of California, a state that receives an enormous amount of ‘funds made available in this Act’ in this and recent appropriations” of Congress, the letter told the Department of Health and Human Services. “The need to remedy this discrimination is urgent because it is immediately depriving [the employees] of a health plan that omits elective abortions.”
In a Sept. 8 response to a letter from the alliance and foundation that California was not only violating federal law but also misinterpreting its own state constitution, Shelley Rouillard, director of the California department, didn’t specifically counter those groups’ analysis.
Rouillard said California law dating to 1975 “requires health plans to cover abortion as a basic health care service” and the state constitution requires them to “treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally.” Her response was included in the groups’ complaint to the federal government.
“No state can ignore federal law and continue to unlawfully receive taxpayer money,” said the alliance’s Casey Mattox in a press release. “So California has a choice: Stop forcing these employers to cover abortion or forfeit the tens of billions of dollars it receives under the condition that it follow the law.”
Liable for ‘Viewpoint Discrimination’ Against Bibles
In its letter to Penn State protesting the school’s removal of Bibles provided by Gideons International from two campus hotels, the alliance reminded the school that it had previously and successfully sued the school for its speech code and “zone” policies and for denying alumni the right to include “religious inscriptions” on alumni-purchased bricks on campus.
But the alliance told President Eric Barron it was writing in a “spirit of cooperation” to counter the legal analysis provided the school by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Supreme Court precedent “affirmatively mandates accommodation” of religions under the First Amendment’s establishment clause, and Penn State had been “merely accommodating the religious needs and desires of many of its guests” by allowing the Bibles in rooms.
Both federal appeals court that have considered how public universities may accommodate religion – in the context of “clergy-led prayers” at graduation – have ruled that the First Amendment does not mandate universities become a “religion-free” zone, the letter said. The atheist group’s view that Bibles in guest room drawers are “offensive” has no bearing on Penn State’s legal obligations, it said.
The school may have even “exposed itself to potential liability” by caving to the atheist group’s demands, the letter said. “Presumably, the guest rooms include a variety of printed materials” that are not religious in nature, meaning Penn State has illegally shown “hostility towards religion” and “engaged in viewpoint discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment.
The alliance noted that the U.S. Navy recently reversed a decision to remove Gideons-provided Bibles from base lodges following a warning from the same atheist group and an opposing letter from the alliance making the same points that it told Penn State.
Penn State shouldn’t let itself “be browbeaten” by the atheist group “into taking unnecessary and potentially unconstitutional actions,” the alliance’s David Hacker said in a press release.
Greg Piper is an assistant editor at The College Fix. (@GregPiper)
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