In Kynwulf v. Corcoran, (SD OH, April 11, 2025), an Ohio federal district court rejected plaintiff's claim that his free exercise rights were violated when he was denied a religious exemption from the estate recovery provisions of Ohio Medicaid’s Specialized Recovery Services program. The court said in part:
Mr. Kynwulf’s allegations do not raise a plausible conclusion that the SRS Program is a coercive program sufficient to state a claim under the Free Exercise Clause. He does not allege that the SRS program is mandatory – instead, he alleges that when he requested to be removed from the SRS program, he was removed.... These allegations make clear that Medicaid’s SRS Program neither compelled nor coerced Mr. Kynwulf such as to prevent him from continuing to practice his religion.
Instead, Mr. Kynwulf seeks to require Ohio Medicaid to conform its program to the tenets of his religion. However, although the Free Exercise Clause “protects, to a degree, an individual’s right to practice [his] religion within the dictates of [his] conscience, it does not convene on an individual the right to dictate [that a governmental program] conform to [his] religion.”... The Free Exercise Clause “is written in terms of what the government cannot do to the individual, not in terms of what the individual can exact from the government.”...
