CV NEWS FEED // New York’s highest court ruled on May 21 that it would uphold legislation requiring insurance companies to cover abortions. In response, the Diocese of Albany announced it will appeal the ruling.
“While we respect the
decision issued today by the New York State Court of Appeals we will again seek
review by the United States Supreme Court of this critical challenge to
religious freedom,” the Diocese said in the May 21 statement.
The Diocese argued
that “regulatory action by the state to require religious organizations to
provide and pay for coverage of abortion in their employee health plans” is
“unconstitutional” and “involves government entanglement in the fundamental
rights of free exercise of faith and conscience.”
State financial regulators approved the pro-abortion regulation in 2017. The state legislature codified it into law in 2022.
As CatholicVote previously reported, in 2021, the Diocese of Albany, together with a group of Catholic and Anglican nuns and several other dioceses and Christian churches across denominations, filed suit against the state over the regulation.
Becket Fund, a religious liberty law foundation involved in the case, stated on its information page: “Each group is challenging New York’s abortion mandate because it believes that life begins at the moment of conception, and that to intentionally end the life of an unborn child is a grave moral sin.”
According to the
Becket Fund, the Diocese had previously asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear
its case on April 23.
The Supreme Court
agreed to consider the case, then sent it back to the state’s highest court to
reconsider. The state’s May 21 decision to uphold the regulation is the result
of the high court’s reconsideration. According to a May 21 Associated Press News report, the high court found that
the state’s criteria for religious exemptions were “too vague,” giving
officials “too much discretion to determine which companies wouldn’t have to
follow the rule.”
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