A ruling in the Archdiocese of New York (et al.)'s HHS lawsuit

A federal-district-court ruling that grants an injunction against enforcing the mandate against a number of Catholic Church-affiliated institutional employers is available here.  I am still reviewing it, but it looks to be a very good result for religious-but-not-exempt employers' bringing RFRA challenges to the mandate.

Here is one noteworthy quote:

The Government has not made a similar showing of a compelling interest in uniform enforcement of the Mandate, for the simple reason that enforcement of the Mandate is currently anything but uniform. Tens of millions of people are exempt from the Mandate, under exemptions for grandfathered health plans, small businesses, and “religious employers” like the Diocesan plaintiffs here. Millions of women thus will not receive contraceptive coverage without cost-sharing through the Mandate. Having granted so many exemptions already, the Government cannot show a compelling interest in denying one to these plaintiffs.

Here is another:

“The Government’s “it’s just a form” argument suffers from the same infirmity. The non-exempt plaintiffs are required to complete and submit the self-certification, which authorizes a third-party to provide the contraceptive coverage to which they object. They consider this to be an endorsement of such coverage; to them, the self-certification “compel[s] affirmation of a repugnant belief.” Sherbert, 374 U.S. at 402. It is not for this Court to say otherwise.”

And a third:

The Government feels that the accommodation sufficiently insulates plaintiffs from the objectionable services, but plaintiffs disagree. Again, it is not the Court’s role to say that plaintiffs are wrong about their religious beliefs. See Thomas, 450 U.S. at 715 (“Thomas drew a line, and it is not for us to say that the line he drew was an unreasonable one. Courts should not undertake to dissect religious beliefs.”); Hobby Lobby, 723 F.3d at 1142 (“[T]he question here is not whether the reasonable observer would consider the plaintiffs complicit in an immoral act, but rather how the plaintiffs themselves measure their degree of complicity.”); Korte, 735 F.3d at 685 (rejecting similar “attenuation” argument, because “[n]o civil authority can decide” the question of whether “providing this coverage impermissibly assist[s] the commission of a wrongful act in violation of the moral doctrines of the Catholic Church”).