The United States Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a case challenging Washington state rules that require pharmacists to provide Plan B or other contraceptives, dismissing some pharmacists’ appeal who said they objected to providing the drugs on religious grounds. The rules stipulate that pharmacies must fill lawful prescriptions, but individual pharmacists with moral objections can refer patients to another pharmacist in the same store. And as Alito writes, the denial of cert in this case is an ominous sign for the future of the court on religious liberty.
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The justices left in place a July 2015 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a state regulation that requires pharmacies to deliver all prescribed drugs, including contraceptives, in a timely manner.
Just one day after issuing a major ruling striking down a portion of a pro-life law in Texas saving thousands of babies from abortion and closing unscrupulous abortion clinics, the Supreme Court has made a second ant-life decision.
Alito said the case resembled a previous Supreme Court decision that protected practitioners of Santeria from a law meant to bar animal sacrifice.
Supreme Court justices are aware that a 4-4 decision is a failure to resolve legal quandaries for the country, especially when lower courts have issued conflicting rulings.
On the Supreme Court, however, the outcome is different: “The court proceeds with eight justices, raising the possibility that, by reason of a tie vote, it will find itself unable to resolve the significant legal issue presented by the case”.
“The Supreme Court term that ended yesterday was more liberal than many had predicted and stranger than anyone could have anticipated”, Steven Shapiro, the American Civil Liberties Union’s national legal director, said Tuesday.
Alito said the case raised important First Amendment claims by religious pharmacists but that “this court does not deem the case worthy of our time”.
State officials argued that the rule is applied neutrally because no one is singled out for exemption; examples such as patient safety and inability to pay are inferred but not spelled out. Christ has risen. Monday’s awful Supreme Court decision can not and will not stop the incredible work of pregnancy care centers, pro-life apologists, and all the everyday champions of life.
But, the nation’s highest court refused to take the case – making it so the infringing pro-abortion law stands.
The Stormans family challenged the regulation in objection to having to provide Plan B or other emergency contraception, saying that doing so violates their belief that life begins at conception. His majority opinion for a divided court in the University of Texas admissions case was the first time he’d voted to uphold an affirmative action plan in 28 years on the court.
Evolving American social attitudes and changes in the law relating to issues such as gay marriage and birth control coverage in health insurance have spurred numerous court challenges by individuals, businesses and nonprofit employers who say their religious liberty has been violated.
A short-staffed Supreme Court won’t rehear an explosive case that could have dealt a fatal blow to public unionism as we know it. The appellate court ruled that pharmacies and pharmacists should be covered under the “rational basis” test which asks if the state had any rational basis for the rule.
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“As the trial court found, the government designed its law for the “primary-if not sole-purpose” of targeting religious health care providers”, said Kristen Waggoner, a lawyer representing the Stormans with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
