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.
At the very least they should try it.
Fight for their principles.
Right to the end. Make Holder’s thugs arrest the execs.
My guess is a lot of patriots would turn out to make that a difficult arrest scenario.
Look at our taglines...
you are not alone.
My wife and I run a successful family business as well and there is no way we can keep it open....It was going to pay for my daughters college I guess not anymore.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Catholic Hospitals. The Catholic Hospitals really must resist or shut down, otherwise, they will be promoting 0-care and violating their principles.
A Catholic Hospital shutdown might even be a good thing if it creates massive access problems that can be blamed on 0bama and 0-care. The government could counter by moving to full blown socialized medicine, but that would not solve the problem of a lack of hospitals and providers.
They will shut them down IMHO and Obee tried a takeover of the facilities that might be the only thing that wake up the sleeping idiots. That is another level it they do that...
What if Hobby Lobby and other CHRISTIANS do not want to just “move on”. What if they answer to someone higher than Obama?
The judge is a Bush appointee, confirmed in 2001 by a Republican congress, and seems to have a Republican past.
I guess he just didn’t want to get hammered by the pundits and the media, so he took the easy way out.
I thought the same thing.
Ultimately, the Obama Administration’s overreaching in this area is going to be met by resistance and nothing but resistance. They have no idea what a s*itstorm they are unleashing every time a case like this comes to public attention. They have overconfidently assumed everyone would just roll over for them-—they were mistaken.
When people push back against these mandates, it’s going to be harder and harder for the Social Engineers to keep pressing their case: at a certain point it will be unmasked as the authoritarian intimidation it is , and always was.
The will suffer a precipitous decline in public approval, not just for this, but most of the rest of their agenda. Someday soon,
these stories will start getting the exposure they deserve;
until then, 98% of the voting public simply won’t know these stories even exist.
Joe gave the pro forma responses. One item was addressed to him by, I believe, the exceptionally evil and obnoxious Senator Leahy.
This was Question 5
"Question 5: In 1989, in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not allow states to criminally prosecute people who burn American flags as a political protest.
The Court said that, ``IMP there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.'' Johnson, 491 U.S. at 414.
Immediately following the ruling, you called the Supreme Court's decision ``out of whack'' and advocated for a state resolution urging Congress to propose a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration. (Source: Ron Jenkins, Lawmakers Ponder Proposed Flag- Burning Amendment, Tulsa World, July 2,1989, at A2.]
Do you continue to adhere to this characterization of the Supreme Court's opinion that the majority was ``out of whack?"
Do you believe that flag burning is a form of political expression, which, no matter how offensive we might find it, is protected by the Constitution's free speech guarantees?
Would you have any difficulties adhering to the letter and the spirit of this decision if it provided controlling legal authority in a case before you?
Answer: In light of the decision in Johnson, the law is clear that flag burning is a form of political expression protected by the Constitution's free speech guarantees and I would certainly have no difficulty in applying that rule and standard in any case coming before me. My earlier characterization of the Supreme Court decision as a legislative policy matter would have no bearing on my rulings if confirmed as a district judge.
I recognize the critical, central role of free speech (including expressive conduct) in our constitutional scheme and in our society generally, and would have no difficulty in adhering to the letter and spirit of the controlling authorities in this area."
The inescapable conclusion is ol'joe perjured himself before the Senate at his confirmation hearing.
He should step down or be impeached ~ there's nothing clearer than that.,P>See: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-107shrg82503/html/CHRG-107shrg82503.htm
Wait until Obama gets to pack HIS SCOTUS with 1 or 2 more "Progressive" judges. Elections DO have consequences.
The O-bots are counting on exactly that — Catholic hospitals shutting down. It gives them the perfect excuse to step in and “fill the gap” with, as you say, full-blown socialized medicine. All part of the scheme.
Yesterday I heard from a very distressed friend in Canada. She was in the emergency room with her fevered, vomitting toddler. They’d been there 7 hours already, still no one available to see them. Same friend — last year her sister was suspected of having breast cancer. It took almost a full five months before a biopsy was done (which confirmed the diagnosis).
Get used to it, folks. This is what Amerikkka have been begging for.
I think that Obama will end poorly.
Finally Obama does something to stimulate the economy - I will CONTINUE to support Hobby Lobby, CONTINUE to support Chick-Fil-A, etc.
And, wherever possible I will continue to AVOID companies that support the leftist regime.
And while this is going on, the Senate wants to pass a bill that allows the government to read our emails.
We are on the way to becoming like Venezuela, I’m afraid.
“Savita’s family thanks you for your support.”
Those that love abortion can pay for their own abortions. You can donate to abortion clinics like I donate to pregnancy centers that support life.
50 million abortions in the US. How many were for the mother’s life?
Moveon.org loves abortion, you can probably make some friends there.
Who is being adversely affected by an employer deciding the terms of their health care plan or whether they will offer one at all? You're not forced to work there, and you can also opt out of their plan and buy your own.
You might be adversely affected if your job requires manual labor vs. a desk job too. Once again, it's your choice to work there or not.
Since this whole level of health care regulation is a massive, unnecessary, unwarranted government overreach to begin with, any kind of bedrock constitutional principles should naturally take precedence over it. This is a case where any judge worth his salt should err on the side of the constitution.
Under this system of federal health care regulation, a system to which constitutional limits apparently do not apply, what is there to stop the government from requiring that all females are circumcised?
Employees could afford their own policies if government intervention, control and regulation wasn't driving up the cost of health care so much.
It is, rather, a move to conscript private business owners into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their religious beliefs and ethical judgments, within their own businesses. It would be analogous to the government requiring the American Cancer Society to give their staffers a monthly carton of Marlboros as a employee benefit, or a drug counseling agency to give out coupons for suicide kits.
If this si true I willbe getting hand sliced bacon from the Muzzie place down the road, especially during Ramadan.
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