Opinion ID: 2778691
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: RFRA Challenge to the Accommodation

Text: The appellees challenge the ACA’s contraceptive coverage requirement as posing a substantial burden on their religious exercise, in violation of RFRA. RFRA places requirements on all federal statutes that impact a person’s exercise of religion, even when that federal statute is a rule of general applicability. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(a).6 Under RFRA, the “[g]overnment may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” Id. § 2000bb-1(b). accommodation imposes any such duty on Plaintiffs”); see also 29 C.F.R. § 2590.715-2713A(b)(4) (“A third party administrator may not require any documentation other than a copy of the self-certification from the eligible organization or notification from the Department of Labor”); id. § 2590.7152713A(c)(1)(i) (“When a copy of the self-certification is provided directly to an issuer, the issuer has sole responsibility for providing such coverage . . . . An issuer may not require any further documentation from the eligible organization regarding its status as such.”). 6 Because the issue was not raised before us, we assume that RFRA is constitutional as applied to federal laws and regulations. But see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 536 (1997) (holding that Congress did not have authority under the Fourteenth Amendment to impose RFRA on state or local laws). 18 Congress enacted RFRA in 1993 in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). In Smith, the Supreme Court rejected the balancing test for evaluating claims under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), under which the Court asked whether the challenged law substantially burdened a religious practice and, if it did, whether that burden was justified by a compelling governmental interest. The Smith Court concluded that the continued application of the compellinginterest test would produce a constitutional right to ignore neutral laws of general applicability and would “open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civil obligations of almost every conceivable kind,” which the First Amendment does not require. 494 U.S. at 888-89. “The government’s ability to enforce generally applicable prohibitions of socially harmful conduct, like its ability to carry out other aspects of public policy, ‘cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development.’” Id. at 885 (quoting Lyng v. Nw. Indian Cemetery Protective Ass’n, 485 U.S. 439, 451 (1988)). Making an individual’s obligation to obey a generally applicable law contingent upon the individual’s religious beliefs, except where the state interest is compelling, permits that individual, “by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to become a law unto himself,’” which “contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.” Id. (quoting Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 167 (1878)). 19 Congress then passed RFRA to legislatively overrule the Smith standard for analyzing claims under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. RFRA’s stated purposes are: (1) to restore the compelling-interest test as set forth in Sherbert and Yoder and to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened; and (2) to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by the government. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b). The Supreme Court has characterized RFRA as “adopt[ing] a statutory rule comparable to the constitutional rule rejected in Smith.” Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418, 424 (2006).