A Kansas court rules on whether Medicaid should cover the alternative procedure for a Jehovah’s Witness. last week, a three-judge state appeals court panel ordered the state of Kansas to pay for Mary Stinemetz to have a liver transplant performed in neighboring Nebraska. The reason? Ms. Stinemetz is a Jehovah’s Witness who believes that blood transfusions violate the tenets of her faith

So she sued to have Medicaid fund a more expensive, “bloodless” version of the procedure that her hospital in Kansas doesn’t perform.

Ms. Stinemetz’s case is not a historical oddity. Jehovah’s Witnesses, though they number only about one million in the U.S., have had an outsized influence on American jurisprudence.

The faith dates to 1931, when an already controversial Bible Student movement reorganized and reasserted its belief in the imminent end of the old world order and the dawning of a new millennium of peace and God’s rule. The new organization ran into immediate opposition from the more established Christian community as well as the general public. The Witnesses were aggressively evangelistic, theologically heretical, and critical of the political and economic order. They also refused to salute the American flag—a sign, they said, of idolatry—and declined any service in the armed forces.

Even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, tensions arose in the American school system over Witness children who refused to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Other children were often unkind to their Witness classmates, and school administrations pressured them too.

The Witnesses were initially reluctant to go to court, as the idea of legal action didn’t fit well with their separatist stance. But the intense persecution they experienced through the 1930s led the leadership to reconsider. Beginning in 1938, they filed some two dozen First Amendment lawsuits that would go all the way to the Supreme Court and redefine the extent of individual and religious liberty.

In a famous 1943 decision, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Witnesses were granted the right to refuse to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

After dealing with the issues most affecting their children, Jehovah’s Witnesses moved on to win rights to spread their faith in public spaces without burdensome legal barriers such as having to register with state officials. In the 1940 case Cantwell v. Connecticut, Witnesses were arrested for violating a statute that prohibited the solicitation of funds without a license and for playing an anti-Catholic message on a phonograph in a Catholic neighborhood. The Supreme Court found that the Witnesses’ actions were protected under both the First and 14th Amendments.

As recently as 2002, the Witnesses went to the Supreme Court in Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton, a battle over a town ordinance that prevented door-to-door advocacy without official prior registration. The court ruled that the ordinance violated the Witnesses’ First Amendment rights

The cases filed by the Jehovah’s Witnesses have had important implications for other religious minorities. In the 1970s, the new Unification Church, followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, aroused the ire of many for their proselytizing and solicitations on the streets. Many communities passed laws attempting to block their activity, and the church pursued over a thousand cases challenging such laws. Based on prior rulings involving the Witnesses, the Unificationists won every case. Later, precedents from Witness cases also helped protect the Amish and the Church of Scientology.

In addition to First Amendment law, the Witnesses have also influenced jurisprudence regarding medicine and healing. Unlike Christian Scientists, who refrain from receiving many common medical treatments, Witnesses accept most practices except blood transfusions, which they equate with the prohibited drinking of blood.

In 1996, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that a Witness had the right to refuse a transfusion in a hospital even though it meant certain death. “The right to refuse medical treatment is deeply rooted in our nation’s fundamental legal tradition of self-determination,” the court said.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on online.wsj.com – however, the original URL is no longer available.]