Justices Reject Appeal of California Contraception Law

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a pair of challenges to disputed California laws -- one that requires employers, including those affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, to pay for contraceptive services as part of their health insurance and a second that gives Indian tribes an exclusive right to offer casino gambling.

It also rejected an attempt by Visa and MasterCard to prohibit banks from opening their networks to rival cards, and refused to consider telemarketers’ appeals of the federal “do not call” registry.

The failed appeals were among nearly 1,800 that were dismissed without comment on the first day of the court’s 2004-05 term. Typically, the high court agrees to hear 1% of the cases that are appealed, and those that are successful usually raise an important issue that has divided lower courts.

The contraception case asked the justices to reconsider what laws violate the “free exercise of religion” protected by the 1st Amendment. The lawyers for the Roman Catholic bishop of Sacramento faced an uphill fight because of a 1990 ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia. In that ruling, he said state laws could not be challenged on freedom of religion grounds if they applied equally to everyone and did not target a religion for unfair treatment.

The California Legislature passed a women’s rights measure that required employers to pay for “approved prescription contraceptive methods” as part of their health insurance plans. While the law excluded churches from the mandatory coverage, it did not exclude all groups affiliated with a religion.

The state mandate was challenged by Catholic Charities of Sacramento, a nonprofit corporation sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. Three-fourths of its employees are not Catholics. In March, the state Supreme Court upheld the law on a 6-1 vote, citing Scalia’s opinion. In their appeal, Catholic Charities’ lawyers said the contraceptive rule amounted to “an unprecedented intrusion upon the religious freedom.” But the justices rejected the appeal in Catholic Charities vs. California.

Lawyers for the ACLU, which had defended the state measure, praised the court’s action. “This case affirms that institutions like Catholic Charities that employ and serve people of many faiths and whose primary purpose is not religious cannot impose religious views about family planning on employees who may not agree with them,” said Louise Melling of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

The gambling appeal challenged a California decision to “grant a statewide casino monopoly to tribes,” a special deal that could be worth as much as $6 billion a year to the Indians.

Federal law permits the state to work out gambling deals with tribes within its borders. Four years ago, the state’s voters approved a measure that cleared the way for tribes to offer “slot machines, lottery games and banking and percentage card games.” Acting on that authority, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has negotiated deals that allow five tribes to offer slot machines and one to open a casino in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The casino monopoly was challenged by the owners of Artichoke Joe’s, a card club near San Francisco, and several others in the Bay Area. The clubs said they were denied the equal protection of the law when the state singled out the Indians for preferential treatment. But lawyers for both the state and the Bush administration said this was a political decision, not a legal matter, and they urged the court to turn away the appeal.

The justices did just that in Artichoke Joe’s vs. Norton.

The credit card case dealt a defeat to Visa and MasterCard, which together account for 85% of the general purpose charge cards issued in the United States. The cards are issued by thousands of banks, which in turn own the Visa and MasterCard networks.

Their main competitors, American Express and Discover, were kept outside the network and were forced to market their cards directly to individuals.

The government’s antitrust lawyers challenged Visa and MasterCard on the grounds that their exclusive arrangement blocked free competition. A federal judge in New York agreed that the banks must be open to issue cards by other companies. A U.S. appeals court upheld the ruling, and on Monday the justices dismissed a further appeal in Visa vs. United States.

“Today is a historic day for the card payments industry,” said American Express Chairman Kenneth Chenault. “A new era of greater choice for U.S. consumers and financial institutions has begun.”

Telemarketers were rebuffed in their latest challenge to the popular “do not call” registry that went into effect last year. Lower courts upheld the federal rules, saying they were a reasonable effort to protect homes from unwanted business calls.

In their appeal, the telemarketers said the ban violated their free speech rights, but the court refused to listen. The case was American Teleservices Assn. vs. the Federal Trade Commission.

The justices also turned away a Ten Commandments case filed on behalf of ousted Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who lost his job after refusing to remove a monument of the commandments from a courthouse.