Court Opinion

ID: 9797757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:28:46.977779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:58:15.022555
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring.
In September 1999, the Legislature enacted the Women’s Contraception Equity Act (WCEA). Under this law, every group health care policy that “provides coverage for outpatient prescription drug benefits” must, as of January 1, 2000, include coverage for contraceptives. (Health & Saf. Code, § 1367.25.)1 Exempt from the WCEA are policies sold to entities that are religious employers. To fall within the act’s definition of “religious employer,” each of these four requirements must be satisfied:
“(A) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity.
“(B) The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
“(C) The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
“(D) The entity is a nonprofit organization as described in Section 6033(a)(2)(A)i or iii, of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.” (§ 1367.25, subd. (b)(1).)
Plaintiff Catholic Charities of Sacramento, Inc. (Catholic Charities), which has brought this lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the religious employer exemption, acknowledges that it does not satisfy any of the four requirements for that exemption. Catholic Charities’ complaint alleges that it is a nonprofit public benefit corporation “operated in connection with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Sacramento” as “an organ of the Roman Catholic Church.” The complaint further alleges that Catholic Charities’ mission is to perform good works, such as “providing immigrant resettlement programs, elder care, counseling, food, clothing and affordable housing for the poor and needy, housing and vocational training of the developmentally disabled and *569the like.” According to the complaint, Catholic Charities provided prescription drug coverage to its 183 employees before the WCEA’s effective date; for it to continue to do so now would be promoting the use of contraceptives, a sinful practice under Catholic Church doctrine. For the purposes of deciding the legal issues in this case, the majority accepts these allegations as true, as do I.
I agree with the majority that Catholic Charities is properly subject to the WCEA. In the course of its discussion, however, the majority rejects Catholic Charities’ argument that the religious employer exemption discriminates against “religious organizations . . . that engage in charitable work, as opposed to work that is purely spiritual or evangelical.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 552.) I am not persuaded that the first requirement of the religious employer exemption, limiting the exemption to entities whose primary purpose is the “inculcation of religious values” (§ 1367.25, subd. (b)(1)(A)), can be reconciled with the establishment clauses of the federal and state Constitutions. This is a close and difficult issue. I need not resolve it, however, because Catholic Charities does not meet the exemption’s fourth requirement that it is a religious entity exempt from federal tax filing, a requirement that both the majority and I agree is constitutional.
I
The United States Constitution’s First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” (U.S. Const., 1st Amend.) This provision applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment; thus, state governments too are prohibited from making such laws. Like its federal counterpart, California’s Constitution provides that the Legislature “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” (Cal. Const., art. I, § 4.) Laws that prefer one religion or religious organization over another (often called “denominational preferences”) violate these provisions. (See Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) 393 U.S. 97, 106 [21 L.Ed.2d 228, 89 S.Ct. 266] [“State may not adopt programs or practices . . . which ‘aid or oppose’ any religion”]; Everson v. Board of Education (1947) 330 U.S. 1, 15 [91 L.Ed. 711, 67 S.Ct. 504] [no state can “pass laws which aid one religion” or that “prefer one religion over another”].)
On this basis, the United States Supreme Court in Larson v. Valente (1982) 456 U.S. 228 [72 L.Ed.2d 33, 102 S.Ct. 1673] invalidated a Minnesota law that treated religious organizations differently. The law in question generally required charitable organizations that solicited contributions to register with the state and to disclose their income and its sources, as well as costs of management, fundraising, and public education. Exempt from this law were religious organizations that received more than 50 percent of their charitable *570contributions from their own members or affiliates, rather than from the general public. Not exempt were religious organizations such as the Holy Spirit Associations for the Unification of World Christianity (Unification Church) that received more than half of their charitable contributions from “ ‘door-to-door and public-place proselytizing and solicitation of funds,’ ” a practice emphasized by the tenets of that religion. (Id. at p. 234.) Unification Church members sued, seeking exemption from the law. The federal district court granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction, which was affirmed on appeal. The United States Supreme Court, in turn, agreed that the law impermissibly “impose[d] the registration and reporting requirements ... on some religious organizations but not on others”; it thus did “not operate evenhandedly,” but instead “effect[ed] the selective legislative imposition of burdens and advantages upon particular denominations.” (Id. at pp. 253-254.)
Catholic Charities argues here that the WCEA’s religious employer exemption similarly imposes its burdens and advantages on some religious organizations but not others. Catholic Charities points out that the exemption favors those religious organizations whose purpose is “[t]he inculcation of religious values” (§ 1367.25, subd. (b)(1)(A)), while disfavoring those entities, such as Catholic Charities, whose purpose is to perform good works. Comparing the WCEA to the Minnesota law struck down by the high court in Larson v. Valente, supra, 456 U.S. 228, 253, which “impose[d] the registrative and reporting requirements on some religious organizations but not on others,” Catholic Charities argues that similarly here the WCEA imposes the contraceptive insurance coverage requirement on some religious organizations but not on others.
To distinguish the WCEA’s religious employer exemption from the religious organization charitable reporting exemption invalidated in Larson v. Valente, supra, 456 U.S. 228, the majority states: “The WCEA confers the special benefit of exemption only on those religious organizations whose tenets are opposed to prescription contraceptives and that meet the other requirements for exemption. . . . Those Catholic employers that do not qualify for exemption are treated precisely the same as all other employers in the state, whether religious or nonreligious.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 554, italics added.) But the Minnesota charitable solicitation registration law struck down in Larson v. Valente treated religious organizations not qualifying for its exemption “precisely the same as” nonreligious charitable solicitors and other nonqualifying religious solicitors. Thus, in treating religious entities that do not qualify for its exemption just like nonreligious entities subject to its requirements, the WCEA seems substantially similar to that unconstitutional Minnesota law.
Under the high court’s analysis in Larson v. Valente, supra, 456 U.S. 228, a law that selectively discriminates among religious organizations might still *571not violate the establishment clause if it is “closely fitted to the furtherance” of a “compelling governmental interest.” (Id. at p. 255.) As the majority explains, and I agree, the WCEA serves the compelling state interest of eliminating gender discrimination. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 255.) But in upholding the first requirement of the religious employer exemption (limiting it to those religious entities whose purpose is inculcating religious values), the majority does not explain how that limitation is “closely fitted” to the elimination of gender discrimination. I have serious doubts that the First Amendment, as construed by the United States Supreme Court, allows California to limit its religious employer exemption to religious entities that have as their purpose the inculcation of religious values, denying that exemption to religious entities, like Catholic Charities, that are organized for the purpose of feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and providing shelter to the homeless.2
II
As I noted at the outset, dispositive here is Catholic Charities’ concession that it does not meet the fourth requirement for the WCEA’s religious employer exemption as a religious entity exempt from federal tax filing. (See § 1367.25, subd. (b)(1)(D).) Because the concerns expressed above about the constitutionality of the exemption’s first requirement—that “inculcation of religious values” (§ 1367.25, subd. (b)(1)(A)) is the purpose of the entity— can have no effect on the judgment, I agree with the majority that if Catholic Charities is to afford its employees health coverage that would include outpatient prescription drugs, it must do so through a policy that provides coverage for prescription contraceptives.

 Further undesignated statutory references are to the Health and Safety Code.

 The majority construes Larson v. Valente, supra, 456 U.S. 228, as prohibiting only those laws that discriminate among religious denominations and thus as having no effect on Catholic Charities, an entity affiliated with the Roman Catholic denomination. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 554, fn. 10.) Even under this view, the first requirement of the WCEA’s religious employer exemption is of questionable constitutionality because it disfavors those denominations that have as their primary purpose something other than the inculcation of religious values. Thus any organization or entity established by a religious denomination whose primary purpose was attending to the needy would on that basis be denied the religious employer exemption.