Written by Don Byrd
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Lawsuits have been filed challenging the Obama Administration’s decision to include certain types of religious organization in the general requirement that health insurance plans must cover contraception. The policy, announced last week, does exempt houses of worship and religious organizations that employ primarily those of the same faith. But the White House has come under intense criticism for failing to include religious hospitals and schools in the class of exempted organizations (See Michael Gerson arguing that Obama is “playing his Catholic allies for fools”).
Writing in the LATimes, Supreme Court reporter David Savage makes the case that the Court’s recent decision in Hosanna-Tabor, affirming a religious school’s exemption from certain employment discrimination laws with regard to ministerial positions, suggests the contraception policy may not be found constitutional.
[L]awyers challenging the rule say the dispute is not about women using contraception, but about forcing the Catholic Church to pay for it. Hannah Smith, a former law clerk to Justices Samuel A. AlitoJr. and Clarence Thomas, filed the two college suits on behalf of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
She described this month’s decision in the Lutheran school case “as a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration’s extremely narrow view of religious liberty. I was shocked they went ahead with this quest to force religious groups to pay for abortion drugs in violation of their religious convictions.”
Her suits say the mandate violates both the 1st Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits the government from putting a “substantial burden” on religious liberty.
Suits have been filed on behalf of Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, and Colorado Christian University. Stay tuned.
