Violating conscience rights costs state $1.4 million

It's costing the state of California $1.4 million for its insistence that it could, without penalty, violate the conscience rights of several churches.

Officials with the ADF have issued a statement that the state is paying that amount to cover the attorneys' fees of the congregations.

The disputes involved two lawsuits and four churches, and now two federal courts have issued separate rulings that the First Amendment protects the churches' rights to decline elective abortion coverage in their health insurance plans.

Leftists and abortion promoters across the nation, including some individuals now in the highest ranks of Joe Biden's administration, repeatedly have tried to make such coverage – and premiums – mandatory as a benefit to the nation's profitable abortion industry.

Because of the courts' rulings on the disputes, the state has agreed to pay the attorneys' fees.

The churches involved were Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego area and, in a second case, Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch.

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The four congregations fought the state's demand that they pay for abortion coverage in their insurance policies.

Both court rulings said the U.S. Constitution protects the churches' freedom to operate according to their religious beliefs, which include their belief in the sanctity of unborn lives.

"The government can't force a church or any other religious employer to violate their faith and conscience by participating in funding abortion," said lawyer Jeremiah Galus.

"For years, California officials, in collaboration with Planned Parenthood, have unconstitutionally targeted faith-based organizations. This is a significant victory for the churches we represent, the conscience rights of their members, and other religious organizations that shouldn't be ordered by the government to violate some of their deepest faith convictions."

The cases generated the discovery that in state emails, the California Department of Managed Health Care ordered the abortion coverage "in response to specific demands from Planned Parenthood. Those demands asked agency officials to implement a 'fix' requiring the health plans of religious organizations to include coverage for abortion, regardless of moral or conscientious objections and despite state recognition up to that point that religious groups shouldn't be subject to such requirements."

The report explained it was revealed that the abortion industry giant "threatened to promote its own legislative 'solution' if the administrative agency didn't act, so DMHC issued its mandate in 2014," the report said.

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