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.
IN HER OPINION FOR the majority, Justice Kathryn Werdegar made it
clear that the religious rights enshrined in the First Amendment
were only valid insofar as they remained within the boundaries of
“progressive” policy.
“The act conflicts with Catholic Charities’ religious beliefs
only incidentally,” Werdegar wrote, “because those beliefs happen
to make prescription contraceptives sinful.”
Werdegar’s message was well received by all the beautiful
people, including those stalwart defenders of religious freedom
over at the American Civil Liberties Union, who described the
ruling as “a great victory for California women and reproductive
freedom.”
Nevertheless, the court’s action left California Catholics at a
loss.
“This case presents a picture of the Catch-22 that some would
use to hamstring faith-based organizations,” Christian Medical
Association Executive Director David Stevens, M.D. said. “On one
hand, they fight laws that would allow faith-based organizations to
restrict hiring to those who follow its religious teachings. Then
on the other hand, as soon a faith-based organizations hires
others, they say it’s no longer a faith-based organization and it
loses religious and conscience freedoms.”
All this to punish the Catholic Church, which, incidentally,
happens to be the largest private provider of health care, social
services and education in California. If anything, this ruling
proves that even the slightest hint of a moral mooring has become
anathema to progressive thinkers, no matter the good that the
practice of those morals may introduce to the community.
As if to second the court’s obscenity, California Attorney
General Bill Lockyer took a few minutes out of his busy schedule of
ignoring the thousands of illegal gay marriages in San Francisco to
announce that the court’s decision was a “huge victory for working
women in California.”
JUSTICE JANICE ROGERS Brown’s eloquent sole dissent sounded like a
sane cry from a forsaken land.
“By protecting religious groups from gratuitous state
interference, we convey broad benefits on individuals and society,”
Brown wrote. “By underestimating the transformative potential of
religious organizations, we impoverish our political discourse and
imperil the foundations of liberal democracy.”
Brown has been nominated by President Bush to fill a vacancy on
the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which often serves as a waiting
room for nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unsurprisingly, the
Feminist Majority, Senate Democrats and others are enthusiastically
opposing (and blocking) her nomination, citing her “poor record on
women’s rights and civil rights.”
But perhaps Democrats should change tactics and let her move on.
Without Brown’s obstinacy, the California judicial system would be
free to pursue its objectives with a united front.
