I wrote last week that corporations might have First Amendment or RFRA religious rights to object to contraception coverage. Now we have a second federal judge agreeing, this time on behalf of Tyndale Bible Publishers (complaint here; preliminary injunction here). The short answer:
The plaintiffs have therefore shown that the contraceptive coverage mandate substantially burdens their religious exercise.
The Tyndale opinion again focuses on the rights of the owners of the company (here, a family foundation) rather than the company itself:
This Court, like others before it, declines to address the unresolved question of whether for-profit corporations can exercise religion within the meaning of the RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause. See, e.g., First Nat’l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 777–78 n.14 (1978) (recognizing that corporations have First Amendment speech rights, but declining to “address the abstract question whether corporations have the full measure of rights that individuals enjoy under the First Amendment”); Stormans, Inc. v. Selecky, 586 F.3d 1109, 1119 (9th Cir.2009) (“We decline to decide whether a for-profit corporation can assert its own rights under the Free Exercise Clause …”); Church of Scientology of Cal. v. Cazares, 638 F.2d 1272, 1280 n.7 (5th Cir.1981) (same). Instead, the Court will assess whether Tyndale has standing to assert the free exercise rights of its owners…
Viewing the rights of Tyndale’s owners (in particular, those of the Foundation) as the basis for its RFRA claim, the Court finds that Tyndale has made a satisfactory showing of Article III standing.
The court also found “third party standing”
It bears emphasizing that if the Court accepted the defendants’ position, no Tyndale entity would have standing to challenge the contraceptive coverage mandate—not even the Foundation. This is because, in the defendants’ view, Tyndale—though directly injured by the regulation—cannot exercise religion, and the Foundation—though capable of exercising religion—is not directly injured by the regulation. The third-party standing doctrine serves to avoid such conundrums.
These cases are serious, but the threat is to mandatory contraception coverage, not the entire ACA.
@koutterson
