The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently decided a case involving a challenge, on religious grounds, to the Affordable Care Act. In Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 13-1144, the Third Circuit rejected a religious-based constitutional challenge to the act’s provision requiring companies to offer health insurance that covers contraceptives for women.
The plaintiff is a corporation owned and controlled by Mennonites, who are opposed on religious grounds to contraceptives like the morning-after pill. The Third Circuit rejected the plaintiff’s challenge to the act, holding that secular corporations do not engage in the exercise of religion, although their individual owners may. Interestingly, although the case is a First Amendment case, the dispositive question in the case involves the interpretation of corporate law: Are corporations legally separate from their shareholders, directors and officers?
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