LifeNews has the story.
A federal appeals court ruled today that the Obama administration can force the Christian-owned-and-operated business to obey the HHS mandate that compels it to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions for its employees.
Earlier this week, a different federal appeals court reinstated two of the top legal challenges to the mandate. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals handed Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College a major victory in their challenges to the HHS mandate. Previously, two lower courts had dismissed their lawsuits as premature because the Obama administration is expected to revise the mandate next year. However, the appellate court reinstated those cases.
Apparently you have to be a non-profit religious college in order to enjoy the freedom of conscience now.
The ruling, if if stands, could destroy Hobby Lobby.
The privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate. The company says it would face $1.3 million in fines on a daily basis starting in January if it fails to comply with the mandate, which requires religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-cause drugs that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.
“Today’s shocking decision from the 10th Circuit is an utter rebuke of religious freedom. Hobby Lobby now faces fines of up to 1.3 million dollars a day if it’s owners refuse to violate their consciences by paying for and providing abortion-causing drugs for its employees. This is a dereliction of duty of the part of the courts to protect IRS citizens from bureaucratic bullies who care little for the First Amendment,” said Ashley McGuire, Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a ruling rejecting Hobby Lobby’s request to block the mandate. Judge Heaton said that the company doesn’t qualify for an exemption because it is not a church or religious group.
“Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion,” the ruling said.
Mardel is a chain of Christian book stores. It is clearly a religious-oriented business. Five minutes in the store will tell you that its values are pro-life.
ObamaCare delenda est. It’s strangling the economy and our religious freedoms at the same time, and it’s not even bringing healthcare costs down. Liberals who support it must support it for some reason other than the purposes for which it was supposedly passed.
I love Hobby Lobby & would gladly support them if they do what so many others are doing & just cut employee hours down to P/T & discontinue any medical coverage. I know they’ve offered coverage forever now & wanted to continue to but what can you do when your being dictated these terms? Certainly not sell your soul to Obama. It’s unfair but so obvious this Marxist is out to destroy religious freedom & every other right as we’ve known it in this country for over 200 years. He hates the constitution & this is all on purpose.
I for one have no doubts that part of it is just hostlity to Christianity, as well as a Puritanical desire that one system of values be pre-eminent, and blessed by government. I have no idea how the type of liberals who think they can dismiss these mild objections–”I don’t want to pay for it”–are ever going to convince other parts of the world that are devout in their traditional ways that increased globalization via the form of some over-arching government will not result, eventually, in the same kind of refusal of toleration for ideals at divergence–but not in fundamental conflict–with cosmopolitan liberal ones.
If I was an African or an Indian of the ub-continent, I would look askance on a world union. There will be an assimiliation attempt by cosmopolitan-type liberals, eventually. Guaranteed. The history of the United States shows it. They of the “cosmocrat”-ilk think they are the natural end-state, already existing in an exalted form of grace and wisdom, and that if they just shove and excommunicate often enough, that they will triumph.
the halfwit commie regime appears to be entrenched and will not give up power, ever. you will see. best thing is to break it off now and not endure 4 years of purposeful destruction of our way of life. pay for the stupidity now and split from these evil people, or pay for it later, when he has sapped our ability and desire to resist. you want to see our future? go look into the faces of people who have lived in communist regimes.
Four years sounds like a long time, but hopefully one day this country will tire of even the great and powerful “O”.
So just wait for the left to squeal like a stuck pig once the levers of government are in other hands. Do they really expect that the only bad effects of Obamacare are going to go against Christians or red state folks?
This law is several thousand pages, and will have tens of thousands of pages of regulations added each year.
Wait until some NYT columnist has to sit in front of a “death panel” and get denied medical service. Oh, the humanity!
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ”
The restriction of the first amendment right of “the free exercise thereof” to recognized formal religious organizations is in direct conflict with the establishment clause. It will be interesting to see how SCOTUS squares this circle.
Hobby Lobby is a business, not a church. You can’t evade the rules on a business by claiming a religious exception. On the other hand if the owners find that running a business according to the law of the land interferes with their ability to worship they are free to sell off their business to someone who doesn’t have such qualms.
What they can’t do is force their religious views on their employees by dictating what medical care they can get according to their own religious views. Now THAT really would be a violation of freedom of religion.
Tlaloc,
Using your same logic …
Any employee who doesn’t like Hobby Lobby’s current benefits package can simply get a job somewhere else.
Also, can you point out where free contraception, etc. is a “law”?
I’m pretty sure that it is a regulation. The article itself called it a “HHS mandate”. Regulations can be overturned as easily as they are issued.
While I find it interesting that you are hostile to people of faith owning businesses, your bias is irrelevant to a discussion of actual business law.
“Hobby Lobby is a business, not a church.”
The 1st amendment does not say “church”, it says religion. The government’s assertion of that distinction attempts to define the proper conduct of religion. It is akin to saying that The Eucharist is not an acceptable expression of religion.
“if the owners find that running a business according to the law of the land”.
That is precisely the meat of the action. The business contends that “the law of the land” is impermissible because it overrides the freedom of religion as defined in The Constitution.
Should a business owned by J’s Witnesses be allowed to exclude their employees from any treatments that involve transfusions of donated blood? Should a jewish business be allowed to exclude coverage for procedures performed on the sabbath? Should a scientologist boss be allowed to exclude cover for psychiatric drugs? In the (very) unlikely event that a taliban opens a business in the US, can he decree that his employees (or their children) can’t be covered for vaccinations? If the catholic church can decide against contraception cover, can a protestant church decide not to cover HPV vaccines, or treatments for HIV?
And before anyone says “don’t be silly – nobody’s doing that” … I know. That’s the point.
To heck with the church, on this one. All they’re doing is paying a health provider to provide the same health care expected by everyone. Consider it a cost of business, or part of a salary package. What sort of health care that fund provides is no more the business of the catholic church than it is the business of a mormon business-owner if his employees use their salary to purchase alcohol. THAT decision lies with the conscience of the employee, not his or her employer. They got all het up about something that really just isn’t any of their business – and it just burns them that they might not be able to dictate it.