Opinion ID: 2816858
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: unusual nature of plaintiffs’ claim

Text: Before we present our analysis of the issues, we wish to highlight the unusual nature of Plaintiffs’ central claim, which attacks the Government’s attempt to accommodate religious exercise by providing a means to opt out of compliance with a generally applicable law. Most religious liberty claimants allege that a generally applicable law or policy without a religious exception burdens religious exercise, and they ask courts to strike down the law or policy or excuse them from compliance. Our circuit’s three most recent RFRA cases fall into this category. In Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, 723 F.3d 1114 (10th Cir. 2013) (en banc), aff’d sub nom. Hobby Lobby, 134 S. Ct. 2751, the ACA required the plaintiffs to provide their employees with health insurance coverage of contraceptives against their religious beliefs. In Yellowbear v. Lampert, 741 F.3d 48 (10th Cir. 2014), a prison policy denied the plaintiff access to a sweat lodge, where he wished to exercise his Native American religion. In Abdulhaseeb v. Calbone, 600 F.3d 1301 (10th Cir. 2010), a prison policy denied the plaintiff a halal diet, which is necessary to his Muslim religious exercise. In each instance, the law or policy failed to provide an exemption or accommodation to the plaintiff(s). The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Holt v. Hobbs, 135 S. Ct. 853 (2015), which concerned a prison ban on inmates’ growing beards, is another recent example of the - 27 - more common RFRA claim. The plaintiff in Holt sought to grow a beard in accordance with his Muslim faith. In Holt, like in Hobby Lobby, the government defendants insisted on a complete restriction and did not attempt to accommodate the plaintiff’s religious exercise. The plaintiff in Holt proposed a compromise—he would be allowed to grow only a half-inch beard—which the prison refused. 135 S. Ct. at 861. The Court ultimately approved this compromise in its ruling. Id. at 867. In the cases before us, by contrast, the Departments have developed a religious accommodation rather than leaving it for the courts to fashion judicial relief. Plaintiffs not only challenge a law that requires them to provide contraceptive coverage against their religious beliefs, they challenge the exception that the law affords to them. The precedents Plaintiffs cite are instructive in some respects, but none of them involve a situation where the government offers religious objectors an accommodation.17 The Supreme Court and this circuit have suggested such accommodations might have eliminated or lessened burdens we otherwise deemed substantial. See, e.g., Hobby Lobby, 134 S. Ct. at 2759 (observing the accommodation scheme “constitutes an 17 The accommodation adds an additional consideration that makes this unlike the typical RFRA case. In Hobby Lobby, Yellowbear, Abdulhaseeb, and Holt, the government either required or prohibited acts of religious significance to the plaintiffs. In the cases before us, the government has freed Plaintiffs from the responsibility to perform the act they consider religiously objectionable—namely, providing contraceptive coverage. Nonetheless, the Plaintiffs argue an act they do not consider objectionable in itself—completing a form or writing to HHS—becomes objectionable because it either causes the provision of contraceptive coverage or renders them complicit in the provision of contraceptive coverage. Therefore, unlike the aforementioned cases, we are in the slightly different position of considering whether an otherwise unobjectionable act, understood in context, constitutes a substantial burden on Plaintiffs’ religious exercise. - 28 - alternative that achieves all of the Government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty”); Yellowbear, 741 F.3d at 56 (underscoring that the case “isn’t a situation where the claimant is left with some degree of choice in the matter and we have to inquire into the degree of the government’s coercive influence on that choice”). Until now, however, we have not squarely considered a RFRA challenge to a religious accommodation. The closest Tenth Circuit case we have found is United States v. Friday, 525 F.3d 938 (10th Cir. 2008), in which defendant Winslow Friday argued his conviction for shooting a bald eagle without a permit violated RFRA because he shot the eagle for use in a tribal religious ceremony. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act forbids killing a bald eagle, but an applicant can obtain a permit to “take” a live eagle for a religious ceremony. See 16 U.S.C. §§ 668, 668a. We recognized the potential question of “whether it substantially burdens Mr. Friday’s religion to require him to obtain a permit in advance of taking an eagle.” Friday, 525 F.3d at 947. We said we were “skeptical that the bare requirement of obtaining a permit can be regarded as a ‘substantial burden’ under RFRA,” id., but Mr. Friday did not make that specific argument, and we decided the permit accommodation otherwise met RFRA’s strict scrutiny element, id. at 948. We spoke favorably of the government’s accommodation scheme in Friday, even though “[t]hat accommodation may be more burdensome than the [religious objectors] would prefer, and may sometimes subordinate their interests to other policies not of their choosing.” Id. at 960. As we noted in conclusion: “Law accommodates religion; it - 29 - cannot wholly exempt religion from the reach of the law.” Id. We therefore turn to uncharted Tenth Circuit terrain.