Posted on 03/19/2012 6:37:42 AM PDT by marshmallow
A Missouri business owner says his right to religious freedom is being threatened.
ST. LOUIS (CNA/EWTN News)A Missouri business owner has become the first employer of a for-profit, secular company to bring a lawsuit challenging the Obama administrations contraception mandate.
Religious liberty is not limited to institutions, said attorney Francis Manion, who says his client believes the administration is forcing him to violate his conscience under the new federal rule.
Manion told CNA on March 15 that the lawsuit is important for private business owners because it asserts that they too have religious rights, and the government has to respect those rights under the Constitution.
The most recent lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was filed March 15 in a federal district court in St. Louis.
Manion, who serves as senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, is representing Frank OBrien and the company that he chairs, OBrien Industrial Holdings, LLC.
The holding company, which is based in St. Louis, operates numerous businesses that explore, mine and process refractory and ceramic raw materials. Its products go to more than 40 countries around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
” - - - they too have religious rights, and the government has to respect those rights under the Constitution.
FINALLY: a legal test between the drumbeat of Bolshevik Dictator Baby-Doc Barak and the US Constitution.
Bump!
How about a lawsuit about the federal government retroactively changing the employment contract by changing the benefits of that contract and imposing an obligation on a business owner?
Or by an individual for the increasing the cost of insurance by requiring reproductive benefits for people that do not require such services?
Thanks.
What I see in our culture is about a 40 % support for whatever the status quo is.
Hence, Baby-Doc Barak, (a former foreign student at Columbia and Harvard), with only hatred of the USA can ram things through Congress that are un-Constitutional, AND STILL GET A 40 % APPROVAL RATING, because once the laws are changed they become the new status quo.
Those who have the guts to stand up to those who dictate from their jobs at OUR Federal Government are my heroes. They deserve our full support.
BTW, what would Davy Crockett do?
This is why Obama dug his heels in on this issue so firmly. He realizes that once you acknowledge the law impinges on first amendment religious rights than anyone, not just Church affiliated businesses or institutions, can claim an exemption. The exemption would swallow up the whole rule and makes the whole of Obama care untenable. The first amendment protects individuals.
I am absolutely blown away that so many people, even here, completely acquiesce to pure fascism and only make semantical arguments about the subordinate clauses in the declaration of antiliberty.
Thank you! The whole notion that the federal government can assert ownership over an individual is execrable. By asserting the power to force individuals to engage in commerce(i.e., purchasing health insurance), they are ultimately asserting some form of OWNERSHIP over individual citizens. Once such a power over the individual is established, what limit could there be to the federal government’s power over the individual? May as well burn the whole bill of rights at that point.
There are two issues here. The First Amendment protects our God-given right to the free exercise of our religious beliefs, and that right trump even legitimate laws that the government might otherwise have the authority to pass. Your issue is that ObamaCare is outside the proper scope of government and outside the Enumerated Powers of the Constitution, which is an equally valid objection. The difference is that the 9th and 10th Amendments have been systematically trampled for generations, while the gross and flagrant violation of the 1st Amendment is a new experience. Either way, I am on the side of freedom, as are all decent Americans.
It has been worrying me that the focus has been on churches and church run entities. The rest of us have rights too. And we have a lot more employees then the churches do.
I run a small business, should I ever become big enough to have actual employees I will want to provide health insurance but I will not want to pay for abortion or suicide drugs. Killing innocent people ain't my bag.
Just because my business is not run by a church does not mean that I check my conscience at the door. Nor should you have to prove that you are a certain religion or even religious at all. I have known agnostics and atheists alike who oppose killing innocent people. There is something in the human heart that says that killing other humans that have done you no harm is wrong. It is pretty much a universal theme in all civilizations.
BUMP
If the Supreme Court declares Obamacare constitutional then there will be no non-violent solutions remaining. Not sure how many people have rationalized or conceptualized that yet. Many see the constitutional challenges and the supreme court taking the case as a good thing. Assuming they nullify the law it will be so. However, if the unthinkable happens, the world will have changed.
You're absolutely right. And furthermore, the narrow exception demanded by religious entities did nothing to prevent their co-religionists in the private sector from being compelled to subsidize the "services" that their church teaches are sinful. This smacks of hypocrisy.
Unfortunately for all of us, the left has succeeded in characterizing both birth control (including abortifacients) and abortion as legal "reproductive health" necessities.
Yes, the left has now somehow been able to create the notion of “contraceptive rights”. There is no right to contraception! This is absurd.
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Cardinal Timothy Dolan issues strongest statement yet against the HHS mandate
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The Bishops Chickens Coming Home to Roost.
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Outrage!
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Bishop David Zubik confronts Obama
Obamas war on the church
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We Will Not Comply: Catholic Leaders Distribute Letter Slamming Obama Admin Contraceptive Mandate
Bruskewitz: Fight Insurance Ruling [Sebelius a "bitter, fallen away Catholic"]
Letter from Archbishop John G. Vlazny on the matter of freedom of conscience and decisions by HHS
Bishop Olmsted's Letter to Catholics [Catholic Caucus]
Liberty for the Amish & Quakers but not Catholics. . .
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Phoenix bishop (Olmstead): defy feds on birth control
A letter from Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr concerning HHS edict
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(Pittsburgh Bishop Zubik comments:) HHS delays rule on contraceptive coverage
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The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been clear on several occasions that any "conscience clause" ought to protect secular employers as well as religious ones, most recently in this statement, issued just last Wednesday.
Catholic Bishops Did Not Support Obamacare Repeal Vote Every major national pro-life organization was on board with the vote by House Republicans to repeal the Obamacare law because they worry about the abortion funding and rationing the law promotes. But the nationals Catholic bishops are not on the same page, this time. Although they strongly opposed passage of Obamacare last year after pro-life advocates were not successful in getting an amendment added to the final version of the bill to mitigate the abortion-funding and conscience concerns for medical workers, the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says the bishops will move in a new direction on repeal efforts.
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/20/catholic-bishops-did-not-support-obamacare-repeal-vote/
Despite the official statements from the USCCB, some bishops are willing to make common cause with socialism and with a rabid pro-abort's coercive "health care" scheme purely for the sake of acquiring funding for their other interests.
JPII on socialism:
Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility that he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. [Centesimus annus]
If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, then attribute their actions to naivete. I'm pleased about the strong resistance they are attempting to mount at this point, but that doesn't negate the fact that they have previously supported this bill and did not support the repeal, though they were presumably aware of Obama's doctrinaire position re abortion rights.
“Just because my business is not run by a church does not mean that I check my conscience at the door.”
That is why the Catholic Church’s opposition to the religious exemption clause rings so hollow; the same Church had no problem with strangling your business with those costs, or strangling all of us individuals for that matter. I’m a Roman Catholic, and I hope they have a miserable time with The Sultan who would never have been elected without their complicity.
They’ve compromised themselves into irrelevance.
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