(LifeSiteNews) — Oregon Right to Life (ORTL) scored a victory for the unborn last Friday when a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in its favor.
In June, ORTL filed a complaint arguing that the Appeals Court should throw out a Clinton-appointed district judge’s ruling last year that denied its request to be exempt from a 2017 Oregon state law that would have forced it to pay for abortions and contraception. Lois Anderson, ORTL’s executive director, argued that covering abortions via health insurance was an attack on their religious liberty.
“The attempt by the state to force Oregon Right to Life to finance abortion — the precise human rights violation we are dedicated to opposing — is blatantly unconstitutional and obviously unjust,” she said this past summer.
Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote the 2-1 majority opinion for the Appeals Court. Obama-appointee Circuit Judge John Owens agreed with him that the case should be sent back to the lower court for further investigation. Senior Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder, an 84-year-old Jimmy Carter appointee, dissented, claiming that the group was not inherently a religious organization.
“ORTL put forth significant evidence of its religiosity, and there was no conflicting evidence against ORTL’s claim that its views are religiously grounded,” VanDyke said. “The district court therefore erred by failing to conclude at the motion to dismiss stage that ORTL actually holds the beliefs professed in the complaint and that ORTL’s opposition to abortion is genuinely religious.”
Both James Bopp Jr., who represented ORTL in the case, and Anderson expressed satisfaction with the ruling.
“It is crucial for courts to take claims of religious belief seriously. The First Amendment would ring hollow if courts were allowed to simply declare that plainly religious beliefs are not religious after all and therefore do not merit constitutional protection,” Bopp said.
“I am thrilled and heartened that the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in our favor, recognizing our clear claim to an exception from being forced to finance abortions,” Anderson exclaimed.
ORTL can now present further evidence at the district court level that it was unnecessarily burdened by the law while seeking immediate injunctive relief, putting the onus on the state and potentially leading to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court down the road.
