Press Release: Comment on Proposed Religious Exemption from New York State Health Insurance Regulation

By
Elizabeth Boylan
March 29, 2017

Proposed New York State Health Regulation Contains Troubling Exemption - The Law, Rights, and Religion Project Responds to a Proposal on Abortion Access

March 29, 2017

Read the full letter from the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, here

Access a .pdf of the original Press Release, here

A proposed New York State regulation requiring insurance plans to cover “medically necessary” abortions contains a broad religious exemption that would undermine the state’s longstanding commitment to reproductive health. The exemption—which is not required by New York’s Constitution or laws—defines the term “religious employers” to include large nonprofits and even some for-profit companies. In the face of a national movement to enact anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice religious exemptions, the regulation would set a harmful precedent by accommodating religion at the expense of other fundamental liberty and equality rights.

On Monday, March 27th, Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Director of Columbia Law School’s Law, Rights, and Religion Project submitted a comment on behalf of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project to the NYS Department of Financial Services “to express [ ] deep concerns regarding the regulations’ expansion of New York’s existing definition of religious employers.”

Noting that religious liberty is already robustly protected in New York, the Law, Rights, and Religion Project's comment states, “allowing an organization that operates in the public sphere to violate neutral employee health and benefit laws serves to reduce, not enhance, true religious pluralism. This is especially true when such accommodations single out particular religious tenets, such as opposition to abortion, for special protection.

“The proposed regulation would allow organizations to treat a medically necessary procedure overwhelmingly obtained by women differently than any other type of care,” said Elizabeth Reiner Platt. “Rather than surrender to the troubling trend of protecting particular religious beliefs at the expense of reproductive health, New York should continue to be a national leader in guaranteeing access to comprehensive health care.” 

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