March 10, 2004

California Killing Religious Freedom

Religious freedom is under assault in California. Shawn Macomber reports...

In California, Catholics are faced with a new rubric imposed by judicial fiat: Faith, henceforth, will be defined by the state. Religious freedoms will come with a big ol' asterisk alongside them from now on, to be clarified only by a government-appointed interpreter of the law.

Hyperbole? On Monday the California Supreme Court determined by a 6-1 vote that Catholic Charities of Sacramento - a social-service agency - must provide contraceptives, outlawed by their faith, as part of its prescription-drug benefit for its employees.

The California state legislature passed a law in 2000 requiring prescription drug plans to cover contraceptives for female employees. Because women paid 68 percent more than men for out-of-pocket birth control prescriptions and were more likely to have to cover the costs of "unintended pregnancies," legislators reasoned, any organization that failed to pay for contraceptives was practicing "gender discrimination."

The legislature, however, did provide an exemption from the law for religious groups who believe that the use of artificial contraception is sinful. But strangely, despite the overt religious nature of the group's work, the court ruled that Catholic Charities was not a religious organization because it hired non-Catholics and offered such "secular services" as counseling, low-income housing and immigration services to people, regardless of their faith.

In other words, by following the tenets of their faith and taking seriously its charge to reach out to the neediest among us, Catholic Charities ceased to be a religious organization, and the protections such a designation bestowed vanished into thin air.