Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. – ObamaCare's controversial HHS mandate suffered another setback on Thursday, as the Supreme Court voted to allow a Christian college to opt out of signing a form that would result in their insurance company providing employees with “free” birth control and abortifacients. Instead, says the high court, the coverage will kick in after they inform HHS of their religious objection. The 6-3 decision exempts Wheaton College from filing Form 700, which certifies its religious objection to providing abortifacient drugs to women, until the case has been fully adjudicated. In all likelihood, the matter will ultimately be decided by...

Pro-abortion pastors from different “Christian” denominations distributed condoms outside a Hobby Lobby store to protest this week’s Supreme Court decision giving it and other companies the ability to opt out of the Obamacare HHS mandate that compels them to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees. This comes after a NARAL board member suggested abortion activists have sex in Hobby Lobby stores as a protest. The Chicago Sun Times has more on what happened: hobbylobby27Christian clergy and activists from different faiths protested outside a Hobby Lobby on Route 59 Wednesday in protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that says...

Lawyers in politics seem to have great difficulty understanding the law these days. First, the “constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office” had his hat handed to him by the Supreme Court on a wide range of issues, and with unprecedented unanimity. Now the woman angling to succeed him, who is often described as an accomplished attorney herself, apparently can’t be bothered to familiarize herself with a case before rendering judgment on it. Hillary Clinton gets two Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler for her remarks on the Hobby Lobby case, but probably deserved two more for...

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, and ruled the federal government could not require closely-held corporations to provide no-cost contraception for their employees. Although that was the question before the Supreme Court, there were many things the Supreme Court didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule on yesterday.  And the most important of these issues--the basic premise at the root of the case’s ideological divide--was not up for debate: that contraception is preventive health care. Yes, contraception prevents pregnancy--that’s the whole point--but why is pregnancy considered to be a disease? It is an odd disease that is...

Out actor George Takei has criticized a Supreme Court decision declaring that some for-profit companies may block their employees' access to certain birth control methods. Hobby Lobby challenged the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) requirement that insurance health plans include coverage for FDA-approved contraception, arguing that the law violates the company's religious freedom. “In this case, the owners happen to be deeply Christian; one wonders whether the case would have come out differently if a Muslim-run chain business attempted to impose Sharia law on its employees,” Takei said in a blog post. “As many have pointed out, Hobby Lobby is the...

WHEN BUSINESS owners enter the public marketplace, they should expect to follow laws with which they might disagree, on religious or other grounds. This is particularly true when they form corporations, to which the government offers unique benefits unavailable to individuals. The Supreme Court weakened that principle Monday. Congress should revitalize it. The justices ruled on the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, which requires employer-based health insurance policies to provide contraception to covered employees. Several corporations challenged the law, insisting that the mandate unlawfully infringes on their owners’ religious rights. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the court agreed with...

America's crazy, patchwork health-care system just took another hit. Which would you prefer: to have the ability to decide for yourself and your family the type of coverage you want to purchase on a health insurance exchange—and having your premiums subsidized by a defined contribution or voucher from your employer—or to cede that ability to your employer entirely, having them pick your insurance for you, but empowering them to decide, based on their personal religious beliefs, which services to cover and which to exclude? After Monday’s Hobby Lobby decision, this is exactly the type of choice that more and more...

When the Supreme Court released their decision inHobby Lobby v. Sebelius on Monday it started the race to understand what it means for the other challenges to the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare. The Hobby Lobby case established that the mandate violates the religious freedom of private, family owned companies, but a number of religiously affiliated non-profit organizations have challenged the mandate as well. Obamacare includes an exemption from the mandate for churches, but that does not extend to thousands of religiously affiliated organizations like hospitals, colleges, universities, religious schools, and charities. For example, Tyndale House Publishing, which is owned by...

Thanks to AG Conservative for that headline. First “don’t ask, don’t tell,” then DOMA, now RFRA: Precisely how many statutes signed by Bill Clinton are the Clintons currently horrified by? It’ll be fun during President Hillary’s administration to try to identify the various laws that Senator Chelsea will be forced to repudiate circa 2036. Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury but as a central issue is because they’re often the canaries in the mine,” Clinton said. “You watch women and girls being deprived of their...

Looked at from a distance, it may seem as if the Supreme Court struck a mighty blow in defense of religious liberty in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which it decided this week. Yes, the court ruled that a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could apply to "closely held" corporations, and under its terms the federal government could not force the Christian family that owns Hobby Lobby to provide insurance coverage for certain drugs and devices that violate the family's religious beliefs. But looked at more closely, the case shows how profoundly the Supreme Court has...

Last night former National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland made an appearance on Fox News' Hannity to discuss the Supreme Court's decision on Hobby Lobby earlier this week. When asked by Hannity how many forms of contraception Hobby Lobby offers employees, Ireland had no idea. The answer is: 16 different kinds. Hannity: Do you know how many kinds of birth control Hobby Lobby offered as part of their plan? Ireland: I don't know.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling. The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that object to covering all 20 methods of government-approved contraception....

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that Christian craft store Hobby Lobby has a legal right to abstain from an Obamacare mandate that violates its religious beliefs about abortion Former Dancing with the Stars contestant and teen mom Bristol Palin wants her fans to celebrate the victory for religious liberty by shopping at their local Hobby Lobby on Thursday Palin said she would post the best pictures of her fans shopping at the store to her blogReality TV show star Bristol Palin is asking conservatives to celebrate the Supreme Court's landmark contraception mandate decision by participating in a Hobby Lobby Love...

Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner at this very early point in the 2016 presidential race and, after the midterm elections, the pro-life movement will undoubtedly bring up a laundry list of her pro-abortion actions and comments. Here is something that will undoubtedly be added to the list.The potential presidential candidate proves in her response to the Supreme Court’s decision protecting Hobby Lobby from the Obama HHS mandate that she really has no fundamental understanding of what the case was about.John McCormack of the Weekly Standard breaks it down: On Monday evening, Hillary Clinton said that she found the Supreme...

How did women get birth control before President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act? Before Obamacare, a woman could go to a doctor and get birth control. She often had to pay or make a copayment for contraception. But in the 2014 political lexicon, that means she had no access. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 Hobby Lobby decision, which recognized family-owned corporations' religious right to not offer contraception mandated under the Affordable Care Act in their employee health insurance plans. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg charged that the ruling would "deny legions of women...

Democrats are putting the Supreme Court in their cross hairs, using its decision against ObamaCare’s contraception mandate to rally their base ahead of the midterm elections. Within hours of the high court’s decision that closely held companies cannot be compelled to offer contraception coverage as part of their employee health plans, Democrats were trying to raise cash and rally voters to their side. Strategists said the issue of women’s reproductive health could play well in elections across the country, helping the party in contests that could largely be won and lost on turnout. “It could play in almost all of...

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...