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71. Is the court likely to find the amendment to the employee benefit plan constitutional as applied to the officer?
The officer's spouse has challenged the amendment, claiming that, as applied to the officer, it violated the officer's constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.
After this amendment took effect, the officer was shot while on duty. Because of a sincerely held religious belief, the officer refused to allow a prescribed blood transfusion and, as a result, died from loss of blood. When the officer's spouse applied for the death benefit, the city denied the application on the basis of the amendment to the employee benefit plan.
A police officer was employed on a city's police force for 10 years. When the officer accepted the job, the city's employee benefit plan provided a death benefit to the spouse of any employee who died as a result of any job-related injury. Last year, the city amended its employee benefit plan to deny its death benefit in cases where the death «was caused by the employee's refusal to accept, for any reason, reasonably available medical care prescribed by a physician.»
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C is correct. The court is likely to find the amendment constitutional because it is a law of general applicability, with no evidence that it was motivated by the desire to interfere with religion. Although the government may not punish someone on the basis of their religious beliefs by denying benefits or imposing burdens because of those beliefs, that is not what is happening here. The city is not singling out a religious group or denying benefits on the basis of religion. The city is denying its death benefits where the death was caused by a refusal to accept reasonably available medical care prescribed by a physician. This is a reasonable limitation on the award of such benefits, which has nothing to do with religious exercise and is therefore constitutional.
A is incorrect. This limitation does not discriminate against a religious practice in any way. The city may regulate conduct in general, and this is true even if the regulation happens to interfere with a person's religious belief as it does in this case.
B is incorrect. The contractual right of the officer's spouse to death benefits had not vested at the time the amendment took effect, which happened before he was shot and died.
D is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. Although the court is likely to find the amendment constitutional, it is not because it conditions receipt of the benefit without penalizing an individual's conduct. As explained above, it is constitutional because it is generally applicable without any motivation for religious interference.