Posted on 11/05/2013 5:08:05 AM PST by raptor22
First Amendment: A federal court has ruled that the ObamaCare contraception mandate violates the guarantee of free exercise of religion and forces some to choose between their religious conscience and bankruptcy.
The Supreme Court's decision in June 2012 that ObamaCare was constitutional because its fines for not complying with its mandates made the law a tax within Congress' authority to impose did not end the constitutional or court challenges to this attempt at redistribution of health and wealth.
On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Gilardi v. HHS that ObamaCare's contraception mandate violates the constitutional rights of plaintiffs Francis and Philip Gilardi, two Catholic brothers who own Freshway Foods and Fresh Unlimited.
The two companies plus Freshway Logistics provide health insurance for their 400 employees through a third-party administrator. The court ruled that they face the choice of violating their religious beliefs in providing insurance to their employees or closing up shop.
In the belief ObamaCare's contraception mandate violates their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the Gilardis filed a lawsuit against the government in January.
The D.C. appeals court agreed with them. The mandate, according to Judge Janice Rogers, writing for a divided three-judge panel, "trammels the right of free exercise" and would force the plaintiffs to choose between bankruptcy and violating their religious beliefs.
"They can either abide by the sacred tenets of their faith, pay a penalty of over $14 million and cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building, or they become complicit in a grave moral wrong," Rogers said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown smiles during a court
session in San Francisco on May 27, 2003. Brown's likely departure from the
California Supreme Court is handing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger his
biggest judicial appointment since taking office in an unprecedented recall election
two years ago. Even though the idea of a "black seat" runs counter to Brown's
rulings against affirmative action and racial quotas, legal scholars say she will
likely be replaced with another black judge.
For the rest of the SF Chronicle story, Click here.
Two enormous ones stand out: in 1948 SCOTUS elevated the separation of church and state issue to put atheists on the same legal footing as believers in God. Given that our entire freedoms in the Bill of Rights were based on our being "created" beings of "Nature and Nature's God", this was a logical impossibility and paved the way for moral relativism that distorts every moral decision since then.
The other was in 1964 when they decided that there could be "no discrimination between the married and the unmarried with regard to the distribution of birth control." The language of that decision (Eisenstadt v. Baird) was then used in upwards of 500 lower-court rulings like a can opener to deconstruct sex from marriage and marriage from childbearing, paving the way for the entire hedonist/feminist/anti-marriage culture that is ruining children and adults today.
The BOR is a superb, permanent reminder of rights that supersede government.
As for actually protecting rights, it is as James Madison described, nothing but a "parchment barrier."
“The Constitution protects the individual from the laws and regulations signed by a usurper. Once a mandate is imposed upon an individual, the individual can object in Federal Court to the laws and regulations imposed upon them by the usurper. The Bill of Rights protects the individual from will of the people if the people choose a usurper for President.”
Unless the US Supreme Court decides that the Congress can tax anything and therefore the usurpation of our rights is now just a “tax”. THAT was the court decision in upholding OabmaCare and the argument that the government cannot mandate we buy something or tax us if we don’t.
The Constitution is dead.
The USSC was being Alice-In-Wonderlandish here.
The case wasn’t brought that it was an unconstitutional tax.
That is going to have to wait till it actually taxes someone.
A person directly effected by the tax law or any other law signed by Obama may object in Federal Court because he is a usurper. The Bill of Rights protects the individual from the tyranny of the low information voters who have obtained a majority of Electoral Votes.
The Constitution must be read in its entire context. The masses can elect a usurper if they choose. The Constitution describes a person eligible to be President. If the masses choose a usurper, then the individual can object to the laws implemented by the usurper by objecting in Federal Court.
The Court cannot order the usurper to vacate unless there is an impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate. The Court cannot order all laws signed by the usurper to be null and void. The Court can order the usurper give a waiver from his laws and regulations to those individuals who bother to object in Federal Court.
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