CV NEWS FEED // A group of Christian health care sharing ministries sued Colorado’s Division of Insurance on May 16, claiming that a new state law imposes intrusive burdens on the ministries that violate their right to freely exercise their religion.
The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries is an organization that helps Christians with healthcare and represents several individual health care sharing ministries. The ministries are based on the early Christian sharing model referenced in Acts of the Apostles and Galatians 6:2, which instructs Christians to “carry each other’s burdens.”
The Alliance’s complaint is centered around a Colorado statute that went into effect in 2022, which requires all health care sharing ministries to report statistical and financial information, as well as submit reports of the ministries’ affiliations and communications.
The Alliance filed a lawsuit in response to the law, claiming that the statute selectively targets Christian health care sharing ministries. According to the complaint, the law makes exemptions for direct primary care agreements and consumer payment plans between healthcare providers and their patients, or “crowdfunded sources.”
The religious ministries are required to submit financial and statistical information, which includes reports on the number of members in the ministry; the amounts requested, contributed, and shared; the ministry’s internal structure; and more.
“This is akin to asking a church in a painstakingly detailed fashion about its collection basket and how it spends that money,” the complaint reads.
The statute also requires ministries to report information regarding contracts, affiliations, medical practitioners it does business with, or any other third parties, which the Alliance claims is like asking a church “how it performs its charitable endeavors, how it evangelizes, and who it associates with in doing so.”
The law additionally requires ministries to submit marketing materials and anything else that promotes the ministry, which the Alliance said is similar to requiring a church to explain the methods it uses to evangelize and teach doctrines.
Failure to comply with the requirements results in heavy fines, and even incomplete submissions could result in $5,000 per day fines.
Based on the fines and reporting requirements, the Alliance claims that the law’s restriction of religious organizations has violated the ministries’ constitutional Free Exercise rights in five different ways.
According to Katy Talento, the Alliance’s executive director, the law forces religious health care sharing ministries to choose between serving the state or serving God.
“Our constitutional framework was set up to prevent this impossible position for religious Americans and their organizations,” she stated in a news release, adding:
For years, the Alliance has tried to work in good faith, with the legislature and then with the Division of Insurance during the regulatory process, to advocate for the rights of Health Care Sharing Ministries and their members. With the finalization of the regulation implementing this misguided law, it has become undeniably clear that the state is permanently committed to ignoring the constitutional flaws in the data collection regime.
Among other petitions, the Alliance is requesting a district court to declare the law in violation of its constitutional Free Exercise rights. In addition, the Alliance has requested that the court issue a preliminary and permanent injunction prohibiting the Colorado Division of Insurance and its members from enforcing the law in regard to the Alliance and the individual religious health care sharing ministries.
