''North Coast Women's Care Medical Group, Inc. v. San Diego County Superior Court'' () is a case decided before the

California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...

on August 18, 2008, ruling that physicians must offer

IUI Artificial insemination is the deliberate introduction of sperm into a female's cervix or uterine cavity for the purpose of achieving a pregnancy through in vivo fertilization by means other than sexual intercourse. It is a fertility treatment f ...

infertility services to

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

s and

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

s despite religious objections or find a colleague in their office who will do so. The suit was brought by Guadalupe Benitez, a lesbian from Oceanside,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, who was treated in 1999 for infertility at the only clinic in her area that accepted her insurance. Two physicians at the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group, Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton, refused to perform an artificial insemination treatment on Benitez because they claimed that such treatment to an unmarried person violated their

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

religious beliefs. After she was denied treatment, Benitez argued in court that the physicians and the clinic really based their decision on her being a lesbian. This violated the

Unruh Civil Rights Act The Unruh Civil Rights Act (colloquially the "Unruh Act") is an expansive 1959 California law that prohibits any business in California from engaging in unlawful discrimination against all persons (consumers) within California's jurisdiction, where ...

, a state law prohibiting discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity covering places of business and public accommodation; marital status was not addressed until 2006. She won at the trial court level in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, but that decision was later overturned by a state appeals court. The California State Supreme Court's decision favoring Benitez was unanimous. Writing for the court, Justice Kennard said:

.California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, from which defendant physicians seek religious exemption, is "a valid and neutral law of general applicability" (Smith, supra, 494 U.S. at p. 879). As relevant in this case, it requires business establishments to provide "full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services" to all persons notwithstanding their sexual orientation. (Civ. Code, § 51, subds. (a) & (b).) Accordingly, the First Amendment's right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the Act's antidiscrimination requirements even if compliance poses an incidental conflict with defendants' religious beliefs. (Lukumi, supra, 508 U.S. at p. 531; Smith, supra, at p. 879.)

References

{{reflist United States free exercise of religion case law United States substantive due process case law United States LGBT rights case law Supreme Court of California case law 2008 in California 2008 in United States case law LGBT rights in California 2008 in LGBT history