General
USCCB Amici Curiae brief in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Commonwealth of PA (2020)
USCCB Amici Curiae Brief in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Commonwealth of PA, March 4, 2020
Amici will address the following question: Whether the federal government lawfully exempted religious objectors from the regulatory requirement to provide health plans with contraceptive coverage.
Amici are a diverse group of religious organizations committed to defending the integrity of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Some amici actively participated in the effort to enact RFRA in 1993 and to amend it in 2001. We submit this brief out of a shared concern that the dangerous conception of third-party harm invoked by the Third Circuit threatens to undermine RFRA as a meaningful defense for the free exercise of religion.
Third-party burdens are no reason to strike down the final rule or to misconstrue RFRA. Congress enacted RFRA to establish a robust defense for the exercise of religion. That protection does not depend on the absence of a burden on others, especially when nearly any adjustment of benefits afforded by the regulatory state can be construed as a “burden” on someone. Reading a no-burden requirement into RFRA would effectively negate its protections whenever religious freedom is controversial.
Instead, RFRA prescribes a balancing test that accounts for third-party harms when deciding whether a government-imposed burden on religious exercise is justified by a compelling interest pursued through narrowly tailored means. Treating every third-party burden as a sufficient reason to deny a claim for religious accommodation distorts RFRA. Third-party burdens cannot act as a freestanding per se defense to a RFRA claim, or religious institutions like Little Sisters of the Poor would lose the legal protections that the statute guarantees.
The principle of third-party harm accepted by the Third Circuit and pressed by the States thus carries sweeping implications. Pressed to its logical limit, that principle would undermine the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment and overturn long-established provisions of federal and state law. None of these results can be defended. Religious exemptions like RFRA and the final rule are fully consistent with the Establishment Clause. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 673 (1984) (The First Amendment “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.”). The Third Circuit was wrong to conclude otherwise.
The Third Circuit’s judgment should be reversed.