The Court was considering the case of a woman who was denied fertility treatments because she is a lesbian and was not married.

The case began in 2001 when Guadalupe Benitez filed suit against Drs. Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton after they refused to artificially inseminate her, claiming to do so would violate their religious beliefs.

A lower court ruled that the doctors could not use religion as a defense, but in 2005 a state appeals court struck down the ruling ,saying that the doctors were within their rights because they based their decision on Benitez’s unmarried status and that discrimination based on marital status is not prohibited by state law.

Represented by Lambda Legal Benitez appealed to the California Supreme Court.

Benitez alleges that after she had received 11 months of preparatory treatment from the North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group clinic in San Diego, and at “the critical and brief moment when Benitez needed to be inseminated,” Brody and Fenton refused to inseminate her.

Both Brody and Fenton said that because of their personal religious beliefs about gay people, they would not administer the treatment Benitez had been promised. In court papers the doctors also said they object to treating unmarried heterosexual women and they claim that their fundamentalist Christian beliefs exempt them from California’s civil rights laws.

The doctors contended they denied treatment because Benitez and her registered domestic partner of 15 years were not married. Lambda legal maintained she was denied because of her sexual orientation, not her marital status.

When the appeal was filed with the Supreme Court, Lambda argued that marital status was being used as a smokescreen.

“Doctors with antigay religious beliefs are not excused from obeying the laws that govern all of us,” said Lambda legal attorney Jennifer C. Pizer at the time. “That our client’s doctors felt that they could defy well-established California law and medical ethics is very worrisome for all of us in a civil society.”