Big Win for the Free Exercise of Religion in Colorado

Bella Health and Wellness v. Weiser

​Sometimes it is good news that breaks late on a Friday. A federal court in Colorado just ruled in favor of Bella Health and Wellness, an independent, faith-based Catholic medical center that offers “life-affirming, dignified health care.”
 
Judge Daniel D. Domenico’s tight and well-reasoned opinion permanently enjoined Colorado authorities from taking any enforcement action against Bella Health for offering an abortion-reversing pill to women who are having second thoughts about a chemically induced abortion. Judge Domenico’s ruling upholds this clinic’s right be free from the unequal application of laws that substantially burden its religious exercise.
 
Whatever your take on the controversial issue of abortion, this is a First Amendment win for the free exercise of religion.
 
This case began when Colorado adopted a first-of-its-kind law restricting progesterone treatment, a popular method to reverse a chemical abortion.
 
According to Becket, the law firm that represents Bella Health, the Colorado law allows public-interest clinics to offer the hormone to women in any circumstance, except if the purpose is to reverse the effects of an abortion pill. Colorado held that if Bella continued to offer progesterone for women who seek to reverse an abortion, the healthcare provider would have faced up to $20,000 per violation and the loss of the medical licenses of its providers.
 
Judge Domenico found: “Overall, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Plaintiff’s use of progesterone is not being regulated neutrally – it is being singled out.”
 
He found that various other off-label uses of progesterone were allowed, even if they caused similar uncertainty regarding risk and efficiency. He further noted that singling out this one use for further restriction substantially burdened Bella Health’s free exercise of its religious beliefs, triggering strict scrutiny under the First Amendment.
 
Whatever one’s views on the controversial issues surrounding abortion, we should all be in favor of the neutral application of laws and medical standards, and against unnecessary or biased burdens on the free exercise of religion.
 
Judge Domenico reminds us that when government asserts that some unequal burden is “necessary,” the government must meet a high standard of proof of why that is so.

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