In Oregon Right to Life v. Stolfi, (D OR, Sept. 30, 2024), an Oregon federal district court refused to issue a preliminary injunction against Oregon's requiring Oregon Right to Life to cover abortion and certain contraceptives in its employee health plan. The organization asserted a 1st Amendment free exercise claim. The court said in part:
... Plaintiff is not affiliated with any religious practice or institution and does not have any religious requirement for being an employee or director. The “specific purpose” and “personal life perspectives” that Plaintiff’s directors are required to subscribe to is free of any religious elements, requiring only that they subscribe to a belief in the importance of human life and oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and “life-destroying research.” As noted, Plaintiff has over 25,000 members, who are not required to subscribe to any religious belief and are responsible for electing two members of Plaintiff’s board of directors. Other than a fleeting reference to “Judeo-Christian ethics,” there is nothing in the articles of incorporation that would suggest any religious element in Plaintiff’s organization.
There are many reasons why an individual or entity might oppose abortion and contraception, which range from deeply held religious conviction to the purely philosophical. Plaintiff asserts in this litigation that its reasons, as an organization, are religious, but that assertion is not fully supported by the record. It is not necessary for the Court, at this early stage of the case, to conclusively resolve whether Plaintiff’s beliefs are, in Plaintiff’s own scheme of things, religious. But the Court’s review of Plaintiff’s organizational documents and requirements for membership, employment, and leadership cast doubt on whether Plaintiff’s opposition is genuinely religious in nature. This doubt undermines Plaintiff’s showing of likely success on the merits.
Defendant also challenges whether Plaintiff actually holds the beliefs professed in the Complaint. As noted, a major aspect of Plaintiff’s objection the RHEA mandate is the provision of certain forms of contraception. Plaintiff has maintained a health benefit plan through Providence Health Plans since 2015, years prior to the passage of the RHEA, and now objects that Providence Health Plans is not acceptable to them because it covers challenged forms of contraception. The fact that Plaintiff maintained benefits through Providence Health Plans prior to the passage of the RHEA, despite its provisions concerning contraception, likewise casts doubt on Plaintiff’s claim.
