Obamacare Contraception Challenge Thrown Out
ACA provides “sufficient protection of religious freedom.”
Religious organizations challenging the PPACA’s contraception mandate have lost their latest battle against the Act’s “religious accommodation.”
Last week the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out a series of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the accommodation on multiple grounds. These organizations have argued that the accommodation does not provide adequate protections to religious freedom because an organization’s request actually “triggers” a provision that activates substitute coverage:
The contraceptive coverage opt-out mechanism substantially burdens Plaintiffs’ religious exercise, Plaintiffs contend, by failing to extricate them from providing, paying for, or facilitating access to contraception. In particular, they assert that the notice they submit in requesting accommodation is a “trigger” that activates substitute coverage, and that the government will “hijack” their health plans and use them as “conduits” for providing contraceptive coverage to their employees and students. Plaintiffs dispute that the government has any compelling interest in obliging them to give notice of their wish to take advantage of the accommodation. And they argue that the government has failed to show that the notice requirement is the least restrictive means of serving any such interest.
The Court, however, was not convinced:
All Plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two-page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state. Religious nonprofits that opt out are excused from playing any role in the provision of contraception services, and they remain free to condemn contraception in the clearest terms.
The plaintiffs to the case are fighting back. “The court is wrong and we will not obey the mandate,” Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, one of the plaintiffs, said in an e-mailed statement.
You can read the full opinion here.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
So the question is…who has actually read the law? The religious organizations living under the thousands of new regulations and having to deal actively with the consequences, or the Circuit Court of Appeals in the heart of Liberalia?
Jonathan Gruber wrote up a synopsis of the law for the Court of Appeals.
Separation of church and state is a one-way street. The church ultimately has to depend on the state to interpret its belief system. That is not proving to be fair for religious organizations.
I am not sure what the answer is, but secular courts deciding what Christians and religious organizations HAVE TO accept and HAVE TO support is not the way it should work.
What is truly amazing is that we continue to allow the main stream media to frame the argument as about contraception/birth control. This is outrageous and ridiculous! The vast majority of complaints are about abortifacient medications not birth control or contraception. Lying liars lie!
If you want to know why the right continues to lose these arguments it’s because we need to use language to our advantage and not allow the main stream media to lie about our values and issues.
Words have meanings and we need to call them out at every turn, in our daily lives and in the media!
Isn’t this the new, and improved ObamaPack court, with extra ObamaBanana Republic goodness?
Not too sure I expected better.
So, take away the WHOLE GRUBerIER law, and take any question like this out of the GRUBerY hands of the courts.
“That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state.”
And that, right there, is the nut of the problem.
And a hell of an admission by the court, nodding in the direction of the “fourth branch of government”.
Which SHOULD NOT exist in anything like the form and power it does, btw.
Pillard and Wilkins are Obama appointees. Rogers a Clinton appointee. Of course they ruled this way.
Gosh darn it, I keep looking through my copy of the Constitution to see where it says the government can tell people what their religious beliefs require and what they don’t, and I just can’t find it.
Ah, you don’t have the special “Penumbra” edition and the Collectivist tinted glasses.
THERE’s your whole problem…
But there’s also people like me who are irreligious and Henry Hawkins who’s an atheist who STILL have consciences and who are STILL protected in expressing those under the Amendment. Not just in having beliefs, but in living them every day.
You’re right, and no one should deny you the right to define what you believe, and what you don’t. We have some limits, of course; we don’t allow people to act on beliefs that they ought to kill and eat people, or that they ought to beat their women, or that they are entitled to their neighbor’s property just because they want it. At least not so far.
If you have that special “penumbra” edition, never mind sending it. It’s a fake. You’ve been had if you paid money for it.
For some odd reason, the “penumbra edition” won’t pass through the interwebs with the special coding intact.
Filters…or something…
The court demands that Americans be “good Germans”. Unfortunately, the problem with a legal argument opposing premeditated abortion, of human lives at all states throughout its evolution from conception to birth, is that the exclusive right was granted to women as a faith-based exemption under the First Amendment. Women have the right to exercise a sincerely held faith to commit and contract for premeditated abortion in the privacy of a clinic, over the counter, etc. The state established religion is libertinism, which is exclusive of religion with stricter requirements for self-moderating, responsible behavior, and inconvenient natural processes, including human life.
I can never figure out what part of this issue is so complicated for a judge to understand….. it’s not different from any other legal peril.
If I commit murder, I am guilty of murder.
If I contract with another person to commit murder on my behalf (whether actively or passively) and deny that I have been a part of the crime; then we are both guilty of murder and I am also guilty of murder for hire and perjury.
This mandates functions the same way – only under the government’s “solution” objecting to committing one mortal sin places you in the position of condemning another party and committing three mortal sins.
Thank you 2ndAmmendmentMother.
That was so beautifully written.
Simple, understandable and a pleasure to read.
And I do agree with you..
I also can never figure out what is so complicated….
Obviously nothing… hmmmm.