The Obama administration has decided even in light of the Hobby Lobby ruling from the Supreme Court to continue their action to force nuns to pay for abortion causing drugs.
The administration filed a “supplemental brief for the government” Monday in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in their lawsuit with the Little Sisters of the Poor. The order sued to not be forced to pay for abortion causing drugs because it violates the Christian faith.
“This Court should proceed with oral argument in these cases,” the administration wrote in the brief. “Because of the injunctions issued in these cases, the women employed by the plaintiffs have been and continue to be denied access to contraceptive coverage.”
The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is overseeing the case for the Little Sisters, told the Christian Post they were disappointed that the government is going to continue to target the nuns.
“We’re disappointed that the government still insists on picking religious winner and losers and exempting church while telling the Little Sisters of the Poor they’re not religious enough,” Adele Keim said.
The Obama administration responded to the Supreme Court’s striking down of the abortion mandate on religious employers by changing the rules to put the burden for abortion causing drugs onto insurance companies.
The HHS announced the changes on Friday for non-profit agencies.
“Under the interim final regulations, an eligible organization may notify the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in writing of its religious objection to contraception coverage,” it outlines. “HHS will then notify the insurer for an insured health plan, or the Department of Labor will notify the TPA for a self-insured plan, that the organization objects to providing contraception coverage and that the insurer or TPA is responsible for providing enrollees in the health plan separate no-cost payments for contraceptive services for as long as they remain enrolled in the health plan.”
The administration is currently considering whether to extend the plan to for-profit companies.
Those who were supporting Hobby Lobby and others who object to being forced by the government to pay for abortions via drugs say that the new rules do nothing to protect the rights of conscientious objectors.
“The government should not force religious organizations, family businesses, or individuals to be complicit in providing abortion pills to their employees or students,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Gregory S. Baylor. “We will consult with our clients to determine how the government’s actions affect their sincere objections to the mandate.”
A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by a pair of anti-life Senators to overrule the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case has failed.
Washington Senator Patty Murray and Utah Senator Mark Udall introduced what they called the “Protect Women’s Health From Corporate Interference Act” that would have stripped people of faith in the United States from owning and operating their own business unless they provided abortion causing drugs to their employees.
The bill failed in the Senate because the Democrats could not obtain 60 votes to bring debate to cloture and move to a full vote. The bill failed 56-43 along mostly party lines to keep the bill from advancing.
Christian organizations celebrated the fact 43 Senators still believe Americans have the right to religious freedom.
“While the Senate rightfully rejected this unjust bill, today is a reminder of the need to stand vigilant in defense of our God-given freedoms against those who would take them away,” Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Casey Mattox said.
Two Democratic senators have introduced a bill they say is aimed to overrule the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision and force Christian business owners to pay for abortion drugs.
Anti-life Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Mark Udall of Colorado have created what they titled the “Protect Women’s Health From Corporate Interference Act.” Abortionists like Planned Parenthood have already praised the bill.
“After five justices decided last week that an employer’s personal views can interfere with women’s access to essential health services, we in Congress need to act quickly to right this wrong,” Murray said in a statement yesterday. “This bicameral legislation will ensure that no CEO or corporation can come between people and their guaranteed access to health care, period.”
“As the nation’s leading advocate for women’s reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood Action Fund is committed to making sure women can get the no-copay birth control benefit that we and others fought so hard to pass and protect,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards proclaimed. “No woman should lose access to birth control because her boss doesn’t approve of it.”
None of the Senators nor any of the groups speaking out in favor of the bill have mentioned that the Court’s decision only applies to 4 of the 20 contraceptives connected to the Affordable Care Act. This means that no women working for these companies is denied contraception.
The National Organization for Women, furious over the Hobby Lobby ruling and organizations that stand up against the Affordable Care Act’s mandate on abortion causing drugs, has released a list called the “Dirty 100” that includes a group of nuns.
The list, which consists of organizations that have filed lawsuits against the ACA, features the Little Sisters of the Poor as a “dirty” organization.
The Little Sisters of the Poor dedicates themselves to serving impoverished elderly people with “grace of hospitality toward the aged poor.” The group operates 200 homes on five continents and serves over 13,000 residents. The nuns who work in the order live communally and take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and hospitality.
The Little Sisters of the Poor were not the only groups that the National Organization for Women says are “dirty.” The list included Priests for Life, a pro-life group that also advocates against the death penalty and 12 Catholic dioceses.
NOW, one of the largest pro-abortion groups in the country, wants to see a significantly expanded mandate for contraception imposed on all businesses than what is in the Affordable Care Act.
While the Supreme Court ruling for Hobby Lobby was a major victory for Christian business owners, other lawsuits against the mandate continue to move forward dealing with other questions related to the mandate.
The Little Sisters of the Poor are continuing in their case against the Obama administration’s demand the Sisters sign an “accommodation” to the mandate that their employees can use to obtain contraceptive coverage. The Sisters say that accommodation makes them complicit in something that goes against their faith, namely, abortion.
However, the ruling makes the lawyers for the Sisters believe the court will favorably view them.
“The court’s language indicates the accommodation’s days are numbered,” Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told the Christian Post.
Blomberg says that he feels confident the court will carry the logic through to his case.
“When it comes to complicity, the government doesn’t get to decide, the religious believer gets to decide,” Blomberg said.
While millions of American Christians are celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision protecting religious freedom, one prominent Baptist pastor is cautiously warning that the celebration of freedom may be short lived.
Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas says that while the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling “stopped the greatest attempted assault on religious liberty in history”, the case is a sign that the government is going to increase attempts to strip away the religious freedom of Christians.
“The Obama administration was basically saying that you can be religious and pro-life in your church, synagogue or at home on the weekend, but when you go to work on Mondays, you have to give up those beliefs and become pro-abortion,” Jeffress said to the Christian Post. “There is no such thing in the Constitution as the separation of faith from the rest of your life.”
Jeffress said that the mainstream media and pro-abortion activists have been repeating the complete lie that those who want to protect the life of unborn children are nothing more than religious fringe extremists.
“It is a part of the belief system of tens of millions of Protestants, Catholics, Jewish people and people of all faiths,” he said. “This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. In this ruling, I think the court is very sound in saying that we have the right to uphold and exercise those beliefs.”
In a major victory for religious freedom, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that “closely-held” for-profit businesses can cite religious objections in order to opt out of a requirement in the Affordable Care Act to provide free contraceptive coverage.
The court’s decision came in the case of Hobby Lobby, the company that also owns the Mardel Christian Stores chain. The owners of the company said the health care law forced them to violate their religious faith by providing drugs that can induce abortions.
The challenge was the first major case related to the President’s signature law in the last two years.
The Supreme Court held that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects the rights of for-profit businesses if they are run on a basic of religious principles. However, the Court’s ruling noted it was specifically applied only to the health care law and did not automatically mean other instances of religious issues and health care would be invalid.
The Obama administration had argued that the case was not really about birth control but rather a way that for-profit businesses could challenge other laws based on religious rights.
The Southern Baptist Convention presented two awards for Americans standing up for their faith in Christ in life and business.
The SBC gave their “Richard Land Distinguished Service Award” to Pastor Saeed Abedini, who has been risking his life daily while wrongfully imprisoned by Iran’s Islamic government. Abedini’s wife Naghmeh was on hand to accept the award on his behalf.
Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commision, said that Pastor Abedini is a “joyful Cross-bearer who has stirred the Church to stand up and speak out and will leave a legacy for generations to come.”
The SBC’s “John Leland Religious Liberty Award” was given to the owners of Hobby Lobby who are engaged in a battle with the Obama administration over parts of the health care law that require them to pay for abortion drugs.
“It would be really easy,” Moore said, “for the Green family to say, ‘lets just submit to that,’ but because of their strong faith in Jesus Christ, and because of their courage, the Greens have refused to comply with the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate under the Affordable Care Act that they provide employees with insurance coverage for what they believe to be abortion inducing drugs. Because they believe that God is the author of human life and that every human life from the moment of conception is sacred and they believe that the government is not the lord of their consciences.”
Pastor Rick Warren and Rev. Samuel Rodriguez said that religious freedom in America is the new civil rights issue.
Rev. Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said Christians need to fight for their religious freedom or be silenced.
“While ending racial inequality emerged as the civil rights issue of the 20th century … religious liberty will be the civil rights issue of the next decade,” Rodriguez said. “Today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity.”
The two spoke as part of a panel discussion at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting titled “Hobby Lobby and the Future of Religious Liberty.”
A big theme of the meeting was the push by many groups to say that people of faith must proclaim that every religious faith is equally valid and all worship the same God. That misconception is driving the definition of “tolerance” to mean something other than what tolerance truly means according to the panelists.
“The “definition of tolerance has changed from I treat you with respect and dignity even when we disagree to all ideas are equally valid,” Warren said.
The panel said ultimately even if those who want to strip Christians of their rights to worship and be a part of society, the world can do nothing to stop Jesus.
“If the United States crumbles away, the Gospel is not lost,” Russell Moore said.