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Judge: Obama Admin Can Force Hobby Lobby to Obey HHS Mandate
Life News ^ | November 20, 2012 | Steven Ertelt

Posted on 11/20/2012 1:12:51 PM PST by NYer

A federal judge has issued a ruling siding with the Obama administration saying that it has the right to force Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned and run company, to pay for drugs for women that may cause abortions.

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.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the business says it is opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate, which it says forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

However, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a ruling late Monday 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.

Heaton wrote that “the court is not unsympathetic” to the company’s desire to not pay for abortion-causing drugs but he said the Obamacare law

“results in concerns and issues not previously confronted by companies or their owners.”

“The question of whether the Greens can establish a free exercise constitutional violation by reason of restrictions or requirements imposed on general business corporations they own or control involves largely uncharted waters,” Heaton wrote.

Hobby Lobby plans to appeal the ruling, according to a pro-life legal group that notified LifeNews of the ruling.

“Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said. “We disagree with this decision and we will immediately appeal it.”

The court did not question that the Green family has sincere religious beliefs forbidding them from participating in abortion. The court ruled, however, that those beliefs were only “indirectly” burdened by the mandate’s requirement that they provide free coverage for specific, abortion-inducing drugs in Hobby Lobby’s self-funded insurance plan.

Duncan previously talked about what the Obama administration told the court:

The administration’s arguments in this case are shocking. Here’s what they are saying: once someone starts a “secular” business, he categorically loses any right to run that business in accordance with his conscience. The business owner simply leaves her First Amendment rights at home when she goes to work at the business she built. Kosher butchers around the country must be shocked to find that they now run “secular” businesses. On this view of the world, even a seller of Bibles is “secular.” Hobby Lobby’s affiliate, Mardel, sells Bibles and other Christian-themed material, but because it makes a profit the government has now declared it “secular.”

The administration’s position here — while astonishing — is actually consistent with its overall view of the place of religion in civil society. After all, this is the administration who argued in the Hosanna-Tabor case last year in the Supreme Court that the religion clauses of the First Amendment offered no special protection to a church’s right to choose its ministers — a position that the Court rejected 9-0. This is the administration which has taken to referring to “freedom of worship” instead of “freedom of religion” — suggesting that religious freedom consists in being free to engage in private rituals and prayers, but not in carrying your religious convictions into public life. And this is the administration who crafted a “religious employer” exemption to the HHS mandate so narrow that a Catholic charity does not qualify for conscience protection if it serves non-Catholic poor people.

As you point out, the administration is trying to justify its rigid stance against religious business owners by saying otherwise they would become a “law unto themselves,” and be able to do all sorts of nasty things to their employees — like force them to attend Bible studies, or fire them if they denied the divinity of Christ. Nonsense. Hobby Lobby isn’t arguing for the right to impose the Greens’ religion on employees, nor for the right to fire employees of different religions. There’s already a federal law that protects employees from religious discrimination and that’s a very good thing. This case is about something entirely different: it’s about stopping the government from coercing religious business owners. The government wants to fine the Greens if they do not violate their own faith by handing out free abortion drugs, and now it’s saying they don’t even have the right to complain in court about it

Duncan said the onerous provisions of the HHS mandate “will hit Hobby Lobby in about two months — on January 1, 2013. At that point, it will face the choice of dropping employee health insurance altogether (and paying about $26 million a year in penalties), or continuing its current plan (which will expose it to about $1.3 million in fines per day). So it is not hard to imagine why the Greens felt they had no choice but to go to court.”

There are now 40 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate, which is a regulation under the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). The Becket Fund led the charge against the unconstitutional HHS mandate, and along with Hobby Lobby represents: Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, and Ave Maria University.

Hobby Lobby is the largest and the biggest non-Catholic-owned business to file a lawsuit against the HHS mandate, focusing sharp criticism on the administration’s regulation that forces all companies, regardless of religious conviction, to cover abortion-inducing drugs. It has faced a small boycott from liberals upset that it would challenge the mandate in court.

The Obama admin says there is an exemption in the statute but Duncan says that is not acceptable.

“The safe harbor’s protection is illusory,” said Duncan. “Even though the government won’t make religious colleges pay crippling fines this year, private lawsuits can still be brought, schools are at a competitive disadvantage for hiring and retaining faculty, and employees face the specter of battling chronic conditions without access to affordable care. This mandate puts these religious schools in an impossible position.”

Last week, a federal court stopped enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher which filed a lawsuit against it — the third such victory.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Front Page News; Government
KEYWORDS: abortion; bloodoftyrants; churchandstate; contraception; culturewar; democrats; govtabuse; hhs; hobbylobby; libralfascism; moralabsolutes; obama; obamacare; obamunism; tyranny; waronchristians; waronliberty
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To: ksen

The government does not make new products. They provide money and private companies design and build the products.

Anyone who have dealth with the govt knows that most of their procedures are not cost effective. Its is “free” taxpayers money so they could care less about cost.

We would still have medical progress but it would be more expensive.


181 posted on 11/21/2012 6:00:54 AM PST by USAF80
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To: Ingtar

I wonder what would happen if Hobby Lobby decided to pursue liquidation over this.


I actually think thats what obama is hoping for. They only have two choices. Throw their religious beliefs out the window or be forced to pay crippling fines that will drive them out of business.


182 posted on 11/21/2012 6:20:35 AM PST by chessplayer
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To: NYer

Take it to a higher court and FIGHT this Hobby Lobby.

All citizens SHOULD be horrified by this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


183 posted on 11/21/2012 6:29:42 AM PST by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo....Sum Pro Vita - Modified Descartes)
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To: NYer
“If you like your current insurance … you will keep your current insurance. No government takeover. Nobody’s changing what you got.”

Lying bastard. Our First Amendment rights have been spit on, trampled on and breached. Rebellion is in order. It is time to storm DC and make our voices heard.

184 posted on 11/21/2012 6:36:58 AM PST by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: ksen
On mandatory insurance: It's reasonable to require auto insurance for those who choose to drive; this is because choosing to drive means choosing an activity with a big potential to cause a whole lot of damage to somebody else. It's a consequence of propellng a large piece of machinery around at 40, 50, 60 miles an hour. You're creating enhanced risks for other people; that's whay requiring auto insurance is justified.

The same is not true for just existing --- being a legal resident of the United States. Just "being here" creates negligible risk of calamitous damage to other persons and their property.

On physician supply and climate of care: Of course there are many factors which influence the supply of doctors: number of openings available in med school, the burdens of student debt, etc. But a big one is the climate of care. With the disappearance of freestanding doctors' offices, small practices and even small hospitals --- due to much higher overheads, complex record-keeping and omnipresent minute regulation --- the care environment becomes depersonalized, even "industrialized." Couple that with stagnant or dropping levels of compensation, and you see lots of doctors leaving medicine (Link) and patients suffering from big declines in personal care.

Literally hundreds of thousands of examples of this in the U.K.

NHS: shabby, unsustainable, our future.

185 posted on 11/21/2012 8:00:22 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o (Stone cold sober, as a matter of fact.)
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To: ConservativeMind
Hobby Lobby could cancel all insurance, pay the $2000 penalty, and know they didn’t buy insurance that covered birth control.

They're not facing a $2000 penalty. They are facing fines of $1.3 million per day. That's a daunting prospect for a family-owned business.

186 posted on 11/21/2012 10:04:32 AM PST by ottbmare (The OTTB Mare)
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To: Ingtar
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Free Exercise has been redefined as what happens during the worship service. Not how you live your life.

187 posted on 11/21/2012 11:32:08 AM PST by Gamecock (Bayonets, Benghazi, Balls, Binders, Big Bird, Birth Control, BS.....)
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To: Gamecock
Free Exercise has been redefined as what happens during the worship service. Not how you live your life.

Hey Game, you may have some weird ideas but this one is right smack on the mark. It stinks. If the shareholders of Hobby Lobby do not want it managed in that manner, then they should buy its Christian owners out, not coerce them to play along with actions that they are convinced that God forbids. And neither under any reasonable view of the US Constitution should the Federal government have any right to coerce them thus, either.

188 posted on 11/21/2012 11:41:18 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: ottbmare

This has gotten way out of hand.

Liberals want to punk society through the government.


189 posted on 11/21/2012 11:44:09 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: Mrs. Don-o; All

This leftist stray alley cat ksen sneaked in here and now wants to be fed. If fed, it will shortly demand the right to keep on being fed.


190 posted on 11/21/2012 11:49:52 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: NYer

Time to go “Twinkie” on them.

Shut the doors, turn out the lights and close.

Do not compromise your faith, ever.

(I am sure most of the young ladies working there are lib. . .the odds support that. . .and voted for The Messiah. Let them reap what they sowed.)


191 posted on 11/21/2012 11:52:44 AM PST by Hulka
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To: Mr. K
Interesting. . .the courts found a muslime-owned Dunkin Donuts franchise had a right to NOT serve the breakfast bagel (HAM and eggs). . .and that that muslimes can't be forced to handle bacon when working a grocery store check-out line. . .hmmmm
192 posted on 11/21/2012 11:57:58 AM PST by Hulka
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To: Cicero

He “grew” in office.

That is how libs describe conservatives that become liberal.


193 posted on 11/21/2012 12:02:34 PM PST by Hulka
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To: Hulka

We have principle headed for a train wreck again.

The USSC might, narrowly, do the right thing here. And since the exact scope of Obamacare coverage isn’t dictated by Congress but by bureaucrats, said bureaucrats have room to be flexible if they want to be.


194 posted on 11/21/2012 12:02:33 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: Hulka

There are many slips between the cup and the lip, and it might also be possible that the right argument was never made and the right precedents never presented. Some weird decisions come out of badly argued cases.


195 posted on 11/21/2012 12:04:50 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: JediJones

“Employees could afford their own policies if government intervention, control and regulation wasn’t driving up the cost of health care so much.”

And sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyers. Can’t forget the sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyers.


196 posted on 11/21/2012 12:06:03 PM PST by Hulka
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To: ottbmare

Well stated.

Bravo.


197 posted on 11/21/2012 12:14:14 PM PST by Hulka
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To: Hulka

There’s some of that, but if there weren’t also a large dumb population willing to sell their soul to the lawyers, the lawyers themselves couldn’t get very far.


198 posted on 11/21/2012 12:15:57 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: Osage Orange; DonaldC

Donald’s tagline: “A nation cannot stand in the absence of religious principle”

Yet. . .I find Donald’s position contrary to that tagline.


199 posted on 11/21/2012 12:16:51 PM PST by Hulka
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Ha. . .so true. . .so true.


200 posted on 11/21/2012 12:20:49 PM PST by Hulka
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