Case: American Civil Liberties Union v. Wright

4:17-cv-05772 | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

Filed Date: Oct. 6, 2017

Closed Date: Nov. 2, 2018

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Case Summary

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) required that health insurance plans include contraception coverage without a copay. This lawsuit challenged an Interim Final Regulation (IFR) promulgated by the Trump administration which allowed any entity to discriminate against women by invoking religious or moral beliefs to opt out of that requirement. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) brought this lawsuit on October 6, 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of the Treasury. The action arose under the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

The plaintiffs claimed that the Religious Exemption IFR constituted government establishment of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. They also claimed that allowing employers and schools to deny health benefits that only affected women constituted sex discrimination, violating Equal Protection under the Fifth Amendment. Finally, plaintiffs claimed that the IFR was enacted in an arbitrary and capricious manner in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, because it was put in place without a good cause for foregoing notice, and without providing a reasoned basis for change in agency position. The plaintiffs sought declaratory relief as well as injunctive relief prohibiting enforcement of the IFR. Plaintiffs also sought award costs and fees, including attorneys’ fees.

The case was originally assigned to Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte, but the parties did not consent to the jurisdiction of a Magistrate Judge, so the case was reassigned to District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong on October 23, 2017. The case was also automatically assigned to the Northern District of California’s Multi-Option Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) program on October 11, 2017.

On November 1, 2017, the plaintiffs filed an unopposed motion to relate this case to California v. Health and Human Services. The cases both challenged the IFR as violating the same rights under the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act, and thus involved substantially the same parties, transactions, events, and legal questions. The movants sought to relate the cases so that they would both be tried before the same judge. The case was reassigned to Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, the judge overseeing the California case, on November 3, 2017.

On December 21, 2017, in the California case, the Court entered a preliminary injunction against the IFR, which was subsequently appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

On January 4, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a motion requesting that the case be removed from the ADR program. The parties mutually agreed that a formal ADR process was unlikely to be beneficial. Judge Gilliam granted the motion on January 8, 2018.

On March 8, 2018, the parties filed a stipulation with a proposed order to stay the proceedings pending the Ninth Circuit's resolution of the California appeal. The court granted the order to stay the proceedings on the same day.

The plaintiffs then filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of their case without prejudice on November 2, 2018. This case is closed, but as of April 18, 2023, the related matter was ongoing.

	Document
1 4:17-cv-05772	Complaint	Oct. 6, 2017	Oct. 6, 2017 Complaint
51 4:17-cv-05772	Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice American Civil Liberties Union v. Azar	Nov. 2, 2018	Nov. 2, 2018 Pleading / Motion / Brief

Case: American Civil Liberties Union v. Wright

4:17-cv-05772 | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

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