How about a different tack?

Can the U.S. Supreme Court overturn a decision based on an improper application of the State Constitution?

I’d say no, the state Constitution is outside SCOTUS’s jurisdiction.

Can the U.S. Supreme Court overturn a decision based on an improper application of the State Constitution?

If so, could it be argued instead that the WA state constitution does not give the state the power to regulate inventories in the first place?

In effect, can you turn the question around from “Where is the state prohibited from…” instead to “where is the state allowed to…”?

Does he own the meat department?

That is, if a Muslim owns his own butcher shop, can the state compel him to sell pork against his religious views? Does that change if he won’t sell it because he just thinks it tastes bad? Do we really want the state to declare that only non-religious objections are legitimate?

If, however, he works at Kroger, well then I believe that Kroger get’s to decide what inventory they stock. If they choose to remove pork from their inventory, that is fine. If they decide that pork will stay but the employee will not have to touch nor sell the offending meat, that is fine. If they decide that since he is unwilling to perform the job required that they will not hire him, that also is fine.

Either way, it’s not a gov’t issue. Inventory is a business owner’s decision.

Thus it is with pharmacists.

I should point out that the case in question, the plaintiff is the pharmacy owner who is compelled to stock the morning after pill, and not an employee pharmacist who was fired for not dispensing said drug.

But what about the prohibition of a religious test for office? Since the justification for the law is that pharmacists are licensed by the state their employment is at the will of the state. Therefore a religious test for their employment would be unconstitutional. The demand that they sell a certain item is in fact a test: a test that they do not have religious scruples against selling that item (this protects even people who do not have such a religion, one can’t be compelled to take a religious test just because they deny that they have the religion).

You would have to argue that this in fact is a religious test by showing that
(1) the law is not based on health concerns because the drugs to not enhance health –they reduce economic risk.
(2) pharmacies do not exist for the purpose of reducing economic risk and are not licensed for that purpose so this is not a standard licensing issue.
(3) there is, in fact, a great deal of political hostility against people of religions that oppose the item.
(4) you might have to show that the legislature was influenced by anti-religious factions which would probably be easy to do.

Heh. :-)

Of course that only means that a right to privacy argument wouldn’t succeed, not that it wouldn’t be correct.

The first bite of the pharmacists personal rights was taken when they allowed their profession to be state licensed instead of privately/academically regulated.

They opted to prevent people from outside their clique from joining the profession via state regulation … now they get to dance the state’s tune.