Pro-life organizations are once again being given the chance to fight for the right to protect the unborn. Praise God!

From Just the News. Mission-driven organizations often fight laws and policies that require them to accept individuals at odds with their mission …

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Pro-life individuals and pregnancy centers routinely face limits on their advocacy and even threats to their existence from so-called buffer zone laws outside abortion facilities and Democratic attorneys general who see them as inherently deceptive.

New York took the unusual step in 2019 of combining these restrictions into a single law, signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, that prohibits “discrimination based on an individual’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making,” depriving religious and secular pro-life organizations their ability to associate with only those who share their values.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived a lawsuit against the so-called “Boss Bill” (SB 660) Thursday, four and a half years after a district court dismissed all but one claim by two pregnancy center networks and a church, citing its February 2023 ruling that the law plausibly forced another pregnancy center network to hire those who act against its “very mission.”

That network, the Evergreen Association, sued in 2020 represented by the Thomas More Society, and argued that “being forced to hire employees who have had abortions” and did “not regret” them, “or would opt for an abortion in the future,” would weaken its “mission to encourage expectant mothers to choose life” and its pro-life message. …

It’s not clear why the 2nd Circuit took nearly two years to apply that ruling to the earlier case by CompassCare, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and First Bible Baptist Church. …

Like the Evergreen Association, which is still arguing its case in district court on remand, the two networks and church will now return to the district court that junked nearly all their case in 2022. For both cases, only their expressive-association claims were reinstated.

The 2nd Circuit panel notably included two judges nominated by President Joe Biden, Sarah Merriam and Myrna Pérez, as well as President George W. Bush nominee Barrington Parker …

While the state is wrong that “employers have no freedom of expressive association with respect to their relationships with paid employees,” the plaintiffs went too far by arguing “employers enjoy precisely the same” rights, when the latter’s conditions have been “regulated and closely scrutinized” for years in state and federal courts, Merriam wrote.

She emphasized that none of the plaintiffs had argued “the non-public fact that an employee had an abortion or used a contraceptive years before his or her employment would impact that Plaintiff’s mission sufficiently to infringe its constitutional rights.”

Each must show the law threatens their mission “in the context of a specific employment decision … presumably” by assessing the “responsibilities of the position at issue, including whether it is client-facing” and speaks for the organization, and the person’s specific conduct or attribute that renders their employment “a threat to the employer’s mission,” the opinion said. …

Share your prayers for these pro-life groups below.

(Excerpt from Just the News. Photo Credit: Sora Shimazaki/Pexels)