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The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby is being called narrow by some analysts, but that’s true only in that Hobby Lobby got everything it wanted and nothing more. In her blistering dissent Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg correctly called it “a decision of startling breadth.” The question before the Court was twofold: Do corporations enjoy the same protections for religious liberty as individuals do? And if so, does providing contraceptive coverage in an employee health plan – as required under the Affordable Care Act – violate that liberty? Justice Samuel Alito, writing for all of the Republican-appointed...

The owners of a chain of stores called Hobby Lobby don't like Obamacare. In particular, they really don't like the part that requires insurance companies to cover contraceptives. Normally, people who don't like a law petition the government to change that law. That's how a nation of laws works. But these men are Christians. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Christian business owners are special. Their deeply held religious belief that some particular form of contraception is immoral carries more weight than the force of law, five conservative Christian justices ruled. The court -- in a fairly bald admission that...

Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned the Supreme Court decision that found some family-owned corporations cannot be forced to pay for the birth control coverage of their employees, required by the healthcare law. "I think that there should be a real outcry against the decision," Clinton said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "And there will be many more now — look, many more companies will claim religious beliefs and some will be sincere but others maybe not. And we are going to see this one insurable service cut out for many, many women." The 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby,...

After today's Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, the left and Democrats are predictably claiming the 5-4 decision bans contraception for women. Matt Canter @mattcanter DSCC: Nearly every GOP candidate supports radical measures that would block birth control &roll back women’s health care rights even further 10:34 AM - 30 Jun 2014 3 Retweets Sandra Fluke @SandraFluke Supreme Court rules that bosses can deny employees coverage of birth control. #HobbyLobby #NotMyBossBusiness 9:24 AM - 30 Jun 2014 177 Retweets 55 favorites That claim is completely false. Not to mention, Hobby Lobby itself provides coverage of 16 different...

The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) has won a last-minute reprieve from enforcement of a federal mandate calling for required coverage of contraceptives in employees' health-care programs. Citing the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision announced by the Supreme Court on June 30, the 11th federal circuit appeals court issued an injunction blocking fines that would have been assessed against EWTN beginning on July 1 for a failure to comply with the contraceptive mandate. The 11th circuit court found, in issuing its order, that EWTN "has asserted, without dispute, that it 'is prohibited by its religion from signing, submitting, or facilitating...

This morning’s Supreme Court ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby will doubtless precipitate a flood of stories from the establishment “news” media claiming that an entrenched cadre of conservative justices have dealt a grievous blow to the reproductive freedom of women and somehow endowed corporations with religious rights. These reports should be ignored as so much hysterical nonsense. What the Court actually said was that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) requires the government to provide closely held corporate objectors to Obamacare’s contraception mandate the same accommodation it already provides nonprofit organizations. The Green and Hahn families, who own two...

Opinion analysis: Does the new religious exemption go far enough? (UPDATED) UPDATE 2:14 p.m. Acting swiftly in the wake of the Court’s ruling on Monday, and relying directly upon that decision, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday blocked all enforcement of the mandate against an Alabama Catholic TV network, a non-profit entity. The concurring opinion of the Court of Appeals, written by Circuit Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., argued that the accommodation, discussed in the following post, is itself likely to be struck down.

I don’t mean to be (entirely) dismissive… But does Sandra Fluke actually still matter to anyone? I mean, you would think that even Democrats might eventually grow tired of listening to a 30-something year old college student whine about wanting free birth-control. But, I guess you would be wrong. Sandra is at it again, ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby has been fighting for the religious liberty of its owners before the Supreme Court. Today, SCOTUS is expected to release its ruling on the matter – determining whether or not the Obamacare contraception...

Monday’s ruling in the case of Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby is an important victory for religious liberty for people of all faiths, regardless of what secularists will argue in their criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision. Liberals have tried to obfuscate the real issue in the case by insisting that it was about the merits of employer-mandated healthcare, the propriety of contraception, or the right of a woman to have an abortion. In reality, Hobby Lobby already provided health care for its employees. Additionally, the company’s insurance covers 16 of the 20 contraceptives required under the HHS mandate.

In a victory for religious freedom, the Supreme Court ruled today 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. in the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (formerly named Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby). The case was the strongest legal challenge to Obamacare since 2012. Justice Alito authored the majority opinion, and Justice Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion.

Held: As applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA. Pp. 16–49.

Remember Sandra Fluke? She’s the professional college student who became famous when a prominent radio host said something rude about her. Now she’s parlaying that “success” into highly effective political campaigns like this: Sandra Fluke @SandraFluke Any day now, #SupremeCourt decides whether corporations can deny women access to contraception. http://dccc.org/fluke 11:00 AM - 27 Jun 2014 44 Retweets 15 favorites Did you catch that? Corporations want to “deny women access to contraception.” By, um, expecting them to pay for it themselves. Here’s the text at the link: TELL THE SUPREME COURT: Protect women’s health care rights! Any day now, the...

The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby on June 26, and the closer we get to that date the more frantic liberals become. Their fear of a decision in favor of the arts and crafts chain, whose owners have challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare’s contraception mandate on the grounds that it violates their religious liberty, has reached such a pitch that they are making claims that transcend the merely portentous. Their warnings concerning the consequences of a high court win for the Green family, the company’s owners, have now become downright apocalyptic....

Washington, D.C., June 5, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Members and supporters of nearly 60 pro-life groups will be taking to social media for three days beginning June 5 to inform women about the deadly dangers of the pill and similar hormonal contraceptives. The campaign, which asks pro-life users of Twitter and Facebook to post facts and statistics about the risks of chemical birth control alongside the hashtag #ThePillKills, was organized by American Life League (ALL). "The mountain of evidence that these drugs are killers cannot just be swept under the rug," said Judie Brown, president of ALL. "We need to...

A Gallup poll released May 30 showing large majorities of Americans now agree that homosexual relations, contraception, divorce, and fornication are "morally acceptable” highlights the need for strong preaching on moral issues, says the president of Human Life International. “The acceptability of these evils is a direct result of people not being engaged in public debate against those trying to force us to accept these issues,” Father Shenan Boquet told LifeSiteNews. “That’s why it’s so important for faith leaders to speak out and find new ways to help the public understand moral teachings on controversial issues.” Father Shenan Boquet, president...

Based on the findings of a recent Gallup poll released on May 30, Americans are becoming more accepting of a number of controversial issues. At the top of Gallup’s list of 19 issues was contraception, of which 90 percent of Americans approve, followed by divorce at 69 percent and premarital sex at 66 percent. Others making the top ten were embryonic stem cell research (65%), childbirth outside of marriage (58%), same-sex unions (58%), euthanasia (52%) and abortion (42%). These numbers shouldn’t surprise us; after all Americans have been steadily rejecting a Judeo-Christian morality in favor of secular relativism for decades....

A majority of Americans support having businesses be compelled to provide contraceptive services as part of a healthcare plan, argues the findings of a recently released poll. Conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, the poll found that of about 1,100 respondents, 61 percent, felt that "publicly-held corporations" should provide contraception as part of their free healthcare plans. 57 percent of respondents felt that "privately-owned corporations" should be compelled to do the same, while only a slight majority, 51 percent, believed small businesses should be required to do so. "With the exception of churches and other places of worship, most...

Because of these substances, Lance ArmstrongÂ’s cycling victories were taken from him and he was disqualified from further competition; Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire were stripped of their baseball records; numerous congressional hearings were held to assign blame regarding their use. We do our best to protect athletes from these dangerous substances while, at the same time, encouraging women to put them in their bodies.What are these substances? Steroids.Oral contraceptives (commonly known as birth control pills) are steroidal hormones. These drugs manipulate hormones to prevent conception, just as performance-enhancing steroids manipulate hormones to enhance physical size, strength, speed and...

In a recent interview with the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, Melinda Gates talked about why she decided to dissent from the teaching of the Catholic Church, but still seems to believe that she is a Catholic in good standing. She said: "I’ve traveled so much all over the world. India, Bangladesh; so many counties in Africa. And I would come home and the stories would ring in my head of the women I talked to on the ground in those counties. I go out to the rural areas. I go out to slums and townships, and I would be...

Law professors John Eastman of Chapman University and Martin Lederman of Georgetown debated the religious implications of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate during a panel discussion at a recent Federalist Society conference. With the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), Congress was “trying to restore a 200-year-old understanding of what the free exercise clause did” for religious conscience. He said, “The First Amendment was not there to protect religions that could only get their accommodations through the majoritarian process.” With religion, “You can challenge the sincerity of religious beliefs but cannot challenge the merits of it” and people “have...