Earlier this month, the Democratic-controlled New York legislature quietly passed a bill that would “prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on the employees’ or dependent’s reproductive health decisions.” On Nov. 8, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law, even though it has no religious exemptions. This means the new law could essentially force pro-life religious organizations to hire people who disagree with their very purpose — or face consequences.
On Nov. 14, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of several pro-life pregnancy centers and a church to hopefully strike down the law, which clearly violates the First Amendment rights of religious people.
For any faith-based organization, their religious beliefs drive their mission and their values and thus extend into the work they do every day. To give an extreme hypothetical, if a pro-life pregnancy center was forced to hire former Planned Parenthood director Cecile Richards, it would most certainly interfere with their mission and, therefore, their free exercise of religion.
One of the plaintiffs, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, has already been tangled up in a First Amendment lawsuit in the past. In NIFLA v. Becerra, NIFLA took California to task about a law that forced pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion clinics or face consequences. That lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court — and NIFLA won.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy said, “It does appear that viewpoint discrimination is inherent in the design and structure of this Act. This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression.”
The point being: The Supreme Court struck down California’s unconstitutional law. Based on the opinions in NIFLA, it doesn’t look like New York’s law would hold up either.
ADF legal counsel Denise Harle told me in an email that:
The New York State Catholic Conference opposed the bill as well, saying, “To require Catholic Church employers to hire or retain staff who have undergone such procedures or who openly express support for them would substantially impair our ability to hire to mission and enforce our faith-based codes of conduct. In this regard, the legislation is in direct conflict with current protections in New York law (e.g., Executive Law Section 296[11]) which permit religious employers to take employment-related actions based on the religious principles upon which they are established or maintained.”
While it’s not exactly surprising that New York Democrats have passed such an extreme law — the state passed an expansive abortion bill earlier this year — it’s hard to see how it will hold up in court. Even so, in passing laws that aggressively target people of faith and faith-based organizations, New York’s liberal lawmakers have officially become the intolerant bigots they claim to fight against.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
