Posted on 06/23/2014 5:11:27 AM PDT by xzins
The Supreme Court decision in the monumental Hobby Lobby case against the abortion mandate in Obamacare is expected either this week or next.
The Obama administration is attempting to make Hobby Lobby and thousands of pro-life businesses and organizations comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees. However, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.
Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of the Becket Fund, the legal group heading up the lawsuit against the mandate for Hobby Lobby, talked about what to expect.
hobbylobby3“We are expecting the Hobby Lobby decision any day now,” she said in an email to LifeNews. “In fact, we have been holding our collective breath for the last several weeks as the Supreme Court issues its Monday opinions.”
“As of today, according to several longtime observers of the Court, the expectation is that additional days will be added to the opinion calendar. We suspect that Monday, June 23, will be followed by several other days of announcements; and then, we will hear later that same week. Until then, we wait,” she added.
Arriaga says the decision is a long time coming.
“I think it is inherently unjust that the government has forced the Green family, the devout owners of Hobby Lobby, to face a two-year battle in court,” she explained. “As you know, the Greens grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith. In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo.”
“Their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be protected by the government. Instead, the government has threatened them with fines and fought them all the way to the Supreme Court,” Arriaga added.
“The government has already exempted tens of millions of Americans from complying with the mandate that forces employers to provide certain specific drugs and devices. However, it refuses to accommodate the Green family because the Green family’s objections are religious. We believe that the government’s position is not only extreme and unconstitutional; it presents a grave danger to our freedoms,” she continued.
The Obama administration says it is confident it will prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”
“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO. “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”
The Supreme Court is also taking the case of the Mennonite cabinet makers forced to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.
In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling recently. The government’s appeal makes it highly likely that the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the upcoming term.
After the appeals court ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a preliminary injunction and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the Obama administration time to appeal the decision.
In an opinion read from the bench, the court said, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”
Duncan says there are now 63 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate. The Becket Fund led the charge against the unconstitutional HHS mandate. The Becket Fund currently represents: Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, Ave Maria University, and Belmont Abbey College.
Hobby Lobby could have paid as much as $1.3 million each day in fines for refusing to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs under the mandate.
A December 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans disagree with forcing companies like Hobby Lobby to obey the mandate.
“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.
The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38% of Likely U.S. Voters still believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.
Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.”
Another recent poll found 59 percent of Americans disagree with the mandate.
What business does ANY gubmint (including the religion of Islam) have to mandate ANYONE when to use contraceptives of any kind?
The theory was since the only religious freedom cases before the court this term was "Hobby Lobby" and the already decided case that expanded the right to prayer at public meetings, that Scalia would not not have said "case(S) that expand religious freedom" if Hobby Lobby hadn't already been decided on those grounds....
I tend to agree...Courts have already declared its more important to force you bake a cake than to have religious objections to doing so.
My prediction is that until the $1 TRILLION HHS is nuked, we’re constantly in jeopardy. It’s not about just winning this skirmish. It’s about winning the war by dismantling these huge, bloated, threatening, unconstitutional bureaucracies.
Of late the Supreme Court decision is based on the highest bidder it’s how we received ObamaCare.
Unhappily, I agree that Roberts will cave. He views his job as finding a compromise rather than looking at the issue and seeing it as the Constitution says (or not).
At best, I think it will be 5-4 that the regulation goes too far, but it will be on some basis that allows the government to continue to apply the regulation to other businesses. Every business will be forced to spend millions in legal fees to fight its individual status...
I’m afraid this will be the first step in dismantling the First Amendment. They MUST do that to force the homosexual agenda. If any business has a right to take actions based on the religious beliefs of the owners - even if it is a one person business - then forcing everyone to bow down to homosexuals won’t stand.
My guess is that the homosexual lobby will get the results it wants from the usual suspects - the ones who keep finding a Constitutional right to homosexuality.
Because corporations are legal entities, the fascist/socialist/statists will ultimately determine that all corporations are owned by the state and thus subject to it’s every edict.
Good information. Thanks, apillar.
The court can rule against the contraception mandate since it’s only a regulation, and since so many exceptions have been granted. That would be in Hobby Lobby’s favor, but it would also enable them to continue preventing bakers from denying cakes to homosexual weddings. It would be based on an invalid burden without an overriding reason not to also grant an exception in this case to health care.
From a different ruling, made today:
“In what was a relatively narrow case concerning a challenge by industry groups and Republican-leaning states the court, divided in several different ways, held that a small proportion of industrial facilities are exempted from the single regulation in question. Most major facilities, including power plants and refineries, will still be covered.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3171207/posts
My guess is they do the same to Hobby Lobby.
I thought this was about birth control? Somehow I don't see that as part of the homosexual agenda.
But a corporation is recognized as a legal entity. Arguing that the 1st Amendment only applies to people is silly. The 1st Amendment like most contained within the Bill of Rights, doesn’t actually give any rights; it is a restriction on the government. The genius of the Founding Fathers at work.
If the SC rules in favor of Hobby Lobby, and I’m not too optimistic that will happen. It opens up the argument for the baker who doesn’t want his business to make gay wedding cakes and other possibilities. Again, not optimistic that this will occur. But even a broken clock is occasionally right.
The birth control argument is rooted in religious freedom, as is the argument that a baker should not be required to bake cakes celebrating something he believes is evil. If they support religious freedom here, it will be harder to deny religious freedom to those who object to homosexuality.
Either we are or are not free to act in public based on our religious beliefs, and so are the businesses that we form and own. You cannot logically be free to have a religious objection to abortion, but not a religious objection to homosexuality.
Against Hobby Lobby. Roberts will fold again.
I agree, Mr Rogers. Thanks.
Kennedy has gone off his rocker, and he is now “caucusing” with the radical Left. I think he will formally invalidate the 1st Amendment with this case.
That's why it will be narrowly decided on the basis of exemptions to regulation granted others under ObamaCare. That way it won't apply to the baker/cake issue.
Kennedy was pro-religious tolerance in the prayer case, so I hold out hope for him.
The USSC will dodge the issue by finding some way to deny them standing.
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