In an action brought by Oregon Right to Life (ORTL), an education and advocacy organization that seeks relief under the First and Fourteenth Amendments from Oregon’s Reproductive Health Equity Act’s requirement that it provide abortion and contraceptive insurance coverage to its employees, the panel reversed the district court’s order dismissing ORTL’s complaint for failure to state a claim, vacated the district court’s order denying ORTL a preliminary injunction, and remanded.

ORTL alleged that the Oregon Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA), as applied, violates its right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Although ORTL is not, strictly speaking, affiliated with any particular-religious denomination and does not have a religious requirement for its board members, the directors on ORTL’s board assert that their sincerely held religious beliefs guide their governance of ORTL. RHEA contains multiple exceptions excusing some religious organizations, including religious employers, from its abortion and contraceptive insurance requirement, but ORTL claims it does not fall within any of those exceptions, which Oregon does not dispute. The district court denied a preliminary injunction and dismissed ORTL’s complaint on the grounds that there was “doubt” as to whether ORTL’s beliefs regarding abortion were “genuinely religious,” and that RHEA is a neutral and generally applicable law and thus subject only to rational basis review—which it satisfied.

The panel agreed with ORTL that its beliefs are religious and sincerely held. ORTL put forth significant evidence of its religiosity, and there was no conflicting evidence against ORTL’s claim that its views are religiously grounded. The district court therefore erred by failing to conclude at the motion to dismiss stage that ORTL actually holds the beliefs professed in the complaint and that ORTL’s opposition to abortion is genuinely religious. The panel reversed the district court’s order dismissing ORTL’s complaint and vacated the district court’s order denying ORTL a preliminary injunction.

The panel expressed no opinion on the issue of whether Oregon’s selective denial of a religious exemption to ORTL—whose beliefs about abortion were religious and sincere—violates the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, 605 U.S. 238 (2025), which reiterated the constitutional significance of exemptions granted to some religiously motivated organizations but not others, the panel remanded this case to the district court to reevaluate, in the first instance, whether RHEA’s application to ORTL violates the First Amendment.

Concurring, Judge VanDyke agreed with the majority that the unrebutted evidence in this case demonstrates that ORTL is motivated by religious beliefs, and those beliefs are entitled to protection under the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. He wrote separately to explain that under Catholic Charities, RHEA is subject to strict scrutiny because it discriminates based on theological choices and discriminates between religions. Judge VanDyke would, in addition to reversing the district court’s dismissal of ORTL’s complaint, order the district court to enter a preliminary injunction on behalf of ORTL because it demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits of its First Amendment claim.

Dissenting, Judge Schroeder wrote that the district court’s dismissal should be affirmed. The majority appears to suggest that ORTL may have been wrongfully denied an exemption as a religious employer under RHEA. Yet ORTL never asked to be considered a religious employer; the state of Oregon has never been asked to determine whether ORTL is a religious employer; and the record demonstrates that ORTL does not consider itself to be a religious organization. This case, therefore, is not similar to Catholic Charities, and a remand for the district court to consider the applicability of Catholic Charities is wasteful.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/10/31/24-6650.pdf