Written by Don Byrd
Writing for the American Prospect, Sarah Posner dives in to the Baptist Joint Committee’s brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Zubik v. Burwell, a consolidation of cases challenging the Obama Administration’s religious accommodation allowing organizations to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
The brief (which you can read here), written by law professor and church-state scholar Douglas Laycock, argues powerfully that the religious accommodation is sufficient. To find otherwise would place many religious liberty protections in jeopardy.
Here is an excerpt from Posner’s article exploring this claim:
Holly Hollman, the Baptist Joint Committee’s general counsel, said in an interview that her group is “very hesitant to oppose any good faith [RFRA] claim.” (The BJC did not file a brief in the Hobby Lobby case, but notes in Laycock’s brief that it believes the case was correctly decided.) But, Hollman added, for the nonprofits to prevail, “the Court would have to find that the government pursuing its interest in the contraception mandate through secular insurance companies is a substantial burden on the religious employer. That’s a far different case than Hobby Lobby.”
…
Laycock warns . . . the nonprofits’ overbroad argument that they are entitled to the same exemption as churches threatens the entire system of religious exemptions across the country. In addition to the federal RFRA, 32 states either have their own religious freedom laws, or interpret their state constitutions in accordance with the federal statute. Thousands of religious exemptions are codified in state and federal statutes and regulations. But that entire system, Laycock warns, is imperiled politically if courts do not “defer to reasonable efforts to draw such boundaries.”
See the Baptist Joint Committee’s resource page on Zubik for more information.
