Posted on 11/20/2012 1:12:51 PM PST by NYer
A federal judge has issued a ruling siding with the Obama administration saying that it has the right to force Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned and run company, to pay for drugs for women that may cause abortions.
The privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate. The company says it would face $1.3 million in fines on a daily basis starting in January if it fails to comply with the mandate, which requires religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-cause drugs that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the business says it is opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate, which it says forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.
“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”
However, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a ruling late Monday rejecting Hobby Lobby’s request to block the mandate. Judge Heaton said that the company doesn’t qualify for an exemption because it is not a church or religious group.
“Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion,” the ruling said.
Heaton wrote that “the court is not unsympathetic” to the company’s desire to not pay for abortion-causing drugs but he said the Obamacare law
“results in concerns and issues not previously confronted by companies or their owners.”
“The question of whether the Greens can establish a free exercise constitutional violation by reason of restrictions or requirements imposed on general business corporations they own or control involves largely uncharted waters,” Heaton wrote.
Hobby Lobby plans to appeal the ruling, according to a pro-life legal group that notified LifeNews of the ruling.
“Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said. “We disagree with this decision and we will immediately appeal it.”
The court did not question that the Green family has sincere religious beliefs forbidding them from participating in abortion. The court ruled, however, that those beliefs were only “indirectly” burdened by the mandate’s requirement that they provide free coverage for specific, abortion-inducing drugs in Hobby Lobby’s self-funded insurance plan.
Duncan previously talked about what the Obama administration told the court:
The administration’s arguments in this case are shocking. Here’s what they are saying: once someone starts a “secular” business, he categorically loses any right to run that business in accordance with his conscience. The business owner simply leaves her First Amendment rights at home when she goes to work at the business she built. Kosher butchers around the country must be shocked to find that they now run “secular” businesses. On this view of the world, even a seller of Bibles is “secular.” Hobby Lobby’s affiliate, Mardel, sells Bibles and other Christian-themed material, but because it makes a profit the government has now declared it “secular.”
The administration’s position here — while astonishing — is actually consistent with its overall view of the place of religion in civil society. After all, this is the administration who argued in the Hosanna-Tabor case last year in the Supreme Court that the religion clauses of the First Amendment offered no special protection to a church’s right to choose its ministers — a position that the Court rejected 9-0. This is the administration which has taken to referring to “freedom of worship” instead of “freedom of religion” — suggesting that religious freedom consists in being free to engage in private rituals and prayers, but not in carrying your religious convictions into public life. And this is the administration who crafted a “religious employer” exemption to the HHS mandate so narrow that a Catholic charity does not qualify for conscience protection if it serves non-Catholic poor people.
As you point out, the administration is trying to justify its rigid stance against religious business owners by saying otherwise they would become a “law unto themselves,” and be able to do all sorts of nasty things to their employees — like force them to attend Bible studies, or fire them if they denied the divinity of Christ. Nonsense. Hobby Lobby isn’t arguing for the right to impose the Greens’ religion on employees, nor for the right to fire employees of different religions. There’s already a federal law that protects employees from religious discrimination and that’s a very good thing. This case is about something entirely different: it’s about stopping the government from coercing religious business owners. The government wants to fine the Greens if they do not violate their own faith by handing out free abortion drugs, and now it’s saying they don’t even have the right to complain in court about it
Duncan said the onerous provisions of the HHS mandate “will hit Hobby Lobby in about two months — on January 1, 2013. At that point, it will face the choice of dropping employee health insurance altogether (and paying about $26 million a year in penalties), or continuing its current plan (which will expose it to about $1.3 million in fines per day). So it is not hard to imagine why the Greens felt they had no choice but to go to court.”
There are now 40 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate, which is a regulation under the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). The Becket Fund led the charge against the unconstitutional HHS mandate, and along with Hobby Lobby represents: Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, and Ave Maria University.
Hobby Lobby is the largest and the biggest non-Catholic-owned business to file a lawsuit against the HHS mandate, focusing sharp criticism on the administration’s regulation that forces all companies, regardless of religious conviction, to cover abortion-inducing drugs. It has faced a small boycott from liberals upset that it would challenge the mandate in court.
The Obama admin says there is an exemption in the statute but Duncan says that is not acceptable.
“The safe harbor’s protection is illusory,” said Duncan. “Even though the government won’t make religious colleges pay crippling fines this year, private lawsuits can still be brought, schools are at a competitive disadvantage for hiring and retaining faculty, and employees face the specter of battling chronic conditions without access to affordable care. This mandate puts these religious schools in an impossible position.”
Last week, a federal court stopped enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher which filed a lawsuit against it — the third such victory.
Here’s hoping people will eventually wake up to the fact that a judge’s edict is no substitute for thought, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, if anyone out thinks that the solution to government tyranny lies with a government institution, I’ve got a million-dollar gun collection to sell you.
I was hoping HL would have a CFA Moment after hearing about their agreement on homo stuff and being Christian; maybe they can have 1 now? I still haven’t visited our new 1, but will soon.
The Communists (Liberal Democrat Socialists) aren’t satisfied until they strong arm everyone into participating with them in their ungodliness and perversions.
Its the mark of the beast.
The only "Rights" you have are those that are consistent with The Socialist Agenda, and moreso if you are a "Protected Class" identified by them. That includes Blacks, Illegals, women who give away their bodies and get knocked up, etc.
We have seen the End of the America we knew, and there's no turning back until Rebellion or Civil War restores this Country.
That should be the case but when you have a muslim/socialist/communist in charge, who make the rules as he goes, with the total media in his pocket, perhaps the rules will apply to all except muslims.
Surprise——surprise-—surprise.
A eunoch Judge decides in favor of Obamacare.
Wyatt’s Torch.
Yep, exactly.
It would have been just as easy for the Judge to say “I find no precedence for any law to force individuals to violate their religious beliefs in the work place. In fact, the totality of the record supports the right of the individual to not engage in supporting activities they find offensive.”
We hold these Truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Not ‘from their King,’ not from ‘the man who WOULD be King,’ not by the self-appointed HE who dishes out and takes back OUR rights.
Obama makes me vomit.
Remember America, the home of the brave and the land of the free? It is now a totally corrupt cesspool of political operatives, all bought and paid with OUR money.
And in the words of my Dad - Normandy Vet - recently deceased —
This is not the America I and many others fought and died for......
Yeah, and it wasn't that long ago that people were warning not to crush the racists with the force of law or there would be hell to pay somewhere down the line...welcome to somewhere down the line.
Move on my @$$! Religious freedom is one of the cornerstones of a free society. I for one will not accept the HHS mandate or any other law requiring me to pay for someone else’s abortions or contraceptives. I fail to see what relevance questions of racial discrimination have to the issue at hand.
Nice bit of equivocating there, Donnie.
Would you be as incensed if this business owner was a Jehovah’s Witness and required to offer health insurance policies to his employees that covered blood transfusions?
Judge: Obama Admin Can Force Hobby Lobby to Obey HHS Mandate
Actually they Obama can’t.
This company is free to close their doors tomorrow. They are free to reduce the number of employees to below the threshold number or their hours below the threshold number.
In the end Obamacare is just a destroyer.
A private business is just that, a PRIVATE business. If I owned my own business I should be able to run it how I see fit. If that means NOT supplying contraceptives in the insurance coverage so be it. If that means I want to serve whites only, so be it. People have the right NOT to work for me or frequent my business.
(It wasn’t that long ago that people were defending white only businesses with the same argument. It’s time to move on.)
NONSENSE.
And it is NEVER time to move on from freedom and liberty!
...as in MoveOn.org ?
What are you doing here on FRee Republic?
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