Health Ministry Loses Appeal Against New Mexico Insurance Agency

An order by New Mexico’s insurance regulator requiring a Mennonite group to cease operating as a health-care sharing ministry likely didn’t breach constitutional protections for religious activity, a federal appeals court found.

Members of the ministry failed to show a lower court abused its discretion by declining to grant a preliminary injunction, Judge Richard E.N. Federico of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit wrote for the panel’s majority in a nonprecedential opinion Thursday.

The Gospel Light Mennonite Church Medical Aid Plan, doing business as Liberty HealthShare, required members to live by Christian standards and collected monthly voluntary ...