Marty, I'd likewise quibble with your characterization of the grandfather 
provision. A plan can maintain its grandfather provision for the foreseeable 
future so long as it abides by the conditions for doing so. This was at least 
part of the basis for the President's infamous "if you like your plan and 
doctor you can keep it" claim.   Of course, in practice the government is 
trying to right the rules so narrowly that it makes it difficult to do so or 
reduces the incentive to do so. Nonetheless, many plans will for a period of 
years maintain that status, thereby creating an underinclusiveness problem.


From: Marty Lederman
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 7:56 AM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Reply To: Marty Lederman
Subject: Re: Conestoga Opening Brief -- Free Exercise/Selective Exemption 
Argument


Just a quick point to quibble with the factual premises of the "selectivity" 
argument.  Plans offered by small business do have to include the relevant 
preventive services, including -- but hardly limited to -- contraception 
services.  (The services also include cholesterol screening; colorectal cancer 
screening; diabetes screening for those with high blood pressure; certain 
immunizations; “evidence-informed preventive care and screenings” for infants, 
children, and adolescents; specified annual well-woman visits; gestational 
diabetes screening; HPV DNA testing; testing for sexually transmitted diseases 
and HIV screening and counseling; breastfeeding support, supplies and 
counseling; and domestic violence screening and counseling.)

Likewise, the so-called grandfathering "exception" is merely an ordinary 
"phasing in," or timing, provision, which allows a transition period for 
compliance with several of the Act's requirements until the plans otherwise 
make one of several specified changes.  The employees of such plans will 
eventually receive the preventive care coverages (not only contraception -- all 
those listed above).

The only real "carve-out" -- the only one that would result in employees not 
receiving contraceptive coverage -- is HHS's own exemption for churches and 
their auxiliaries.  And if that religious accommodation is what triggers 
Lukumi, well . . .


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 9:37 PM, James Oleske 
<jole...@lclark.edu<mailto:jole...@lclark.edu>> wrote:
The opening brief for Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. has been filed, and I 
believe this may be the first time the Supreme Court has been presented with an 
argument in a party's merits brief as to the scope of the so-called 
"Sherbert-exception to Smith" -- the idea expressed in both Smith and Lukumi 
that although the Free Exercise Clause does not require religious exemptions to 
be made from uniform legal obligations, religious exemptions may be required 
when other exemptions to a law are available.

In an article last year, I suggested that there remain at least five major 
unresolved questions about the selective-exemption rule:

1.  What is the purpose of the rule: is it designed to guard against the danger 
of intentional discrimination or to address the adverse impact on religious 
minorities of unintentional neglect or indifference?

2.  Does the rule only apply when a law allows for ad hoc, individualized 
exemptions to an obligation (e.g., discretionary excuses under a "good cause" 
or "necessary" standard), or does it also apply when the government makes 
select categorical exemptions to a law?

3.  If the rule applies when categorical exemptions are made, how should courts 
determine whether an existing categorical exemption to a law is sufficiently 
analogous to the requested religious exemption to be deemed a relevant 
comparator?

4.  How many comparable categorical exemptions must exist before the 
selective-exemption rule is triggered by the denial of a religious exemption?

5. What is the appropriate level of judicial scrutiny to be applied once the 
selective-exemption rule is triggered?

Conestoga's positions on questions #2 and #5 are what you would expect. On #2, 
it argues that the selective-exemption rule extends to situations involving 
categorical exemptions (in this case, the ACA's exemptions for small businesses 
and grandfathered plans). On #5, it argues for strict scrutiny (which is what 
the Court indicated in both Smith and Lukumi applies to 
individualized-exemption situations).

Conestoga's brief does not contain much argument relevant to questions #3 and 
#4.

As for #1, I found the most relevant passage in Conestoga's brief to be quite 
surprising. Usually, advocates of a broad reading of the selective-exemption 
rule make a point of contending that the rule is not limited to situations 
involving the danger of discriminatory intent. Yet, Conestoga's brief quotes a 
portion of the Third Circuit's decision in Fraternal Order of Police Newark 
Lodge v. Newark that speaks directly to discriminatory intent and is not 
usually quoted by advocates of a broad reading of the rule:

"Providing secular exemptions 'while refusing religious exemptions is 
sufficiently suggestive of discriminatory intent as to trigger heightened 
scrutiny under Smith and Lukumi.'" Br. at 46 (quoting Newark Lodge at 365).

As it turns out, this is the very same passage from Newark Lodge that I 
suggested in my article may narrow the universe of categorical-exemption 
situations that trigger the selective-exemption rule:

"[T]the court’s application of the selective-exemption rule in Newark Lodge 
also included the key phrase, 'while refusing.' That phrase is a reminder of an 
important but underappreciated fact in the case: the categorical medical 
exemption was not part of the original no-beard policy and was only adopted 
after the request for the religious exemptions was made. Under those 
circumstances, granting the categorical medical exemption while denying the 
religious exemptions would, as the court notes, seem to raise the same risk of 
devaluing religion as a situation in which individualized exemptions are 
available and religious exemptions are denied. It is important to note, 
however, that the very reason there was a risk of devaluing religion in Newark 
Lodge—that the denied religious exemption was considered alongside other 
granted exemptions—is a dynamic likely to be absent in many categorical 
exemption cases, where exemptions are written into a law or policy separate 
from any consideration of a request for a religious exemption. In those more 
typical categorical exemption cases, there would seem to be considerably less 
reason to draw an inference of discriminatory intent from the adoption of a 
categorical exemption." - Lukumi at Twenty, 19 Animal Law 295, 308 (2013).

With respect to the ACA cases, the denied religious exemptions for commercial 
business owners were not considered alongside the granted secular exemptions. 
Rather, "the granted secular exemptions (for small businesses with fewer than 
fifty employees and for grandfathered plans) were adopted by Congress in the 
ACA prior to HHS's regulatory consideration of religious exemptions for 
commercial businesses." Id. at 328 n.193. So if my reading of the 
selective-exemption rule is correct, the rule would not necessarily be 
implicated in the ACA cases (at least by the small business and grandfather 
exemptions; I'll leave to others the merits of Conestoga's argument that HHS's 
granting of exemptions to some religious entities requires exemptions to be 
granted to all entities with a religious objection).

Of course, many commentators take a much broader view of the 
selective-exemption rule than do I, as reflected in the brief filed by 24 
constitutional law professors in Stormans v. Selecky, which is now being held 
by the Ninth Circuit pending Conestoga.

That law-scholars amicus brief is available here:
http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Constitutional-Law-Scholars-Brief.pdf.

My article on the selective-exemption rule is available here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2216207

Conestoga's opening brief is available here:
http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ConestogaMeritsBrief.pdf

- Jim



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