Little Sisters at Supreme Court (Courtesy Becket Fund)
In oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, the White House insisted it can force an order of Catholic nuns to violate their faith and provide access to abortion pills through their health-insurance program for employees of retirement centers.
The two sides appeared to be arguing different cases.
The nuns, headquartered in Denver, argue that if the government wants to deliver abortion pills to Americans, it has many ways to do so without involving them at all.
Federal attorneys, however, claimed that the nuns, by declining to sign over the authority for some parts of their health-care plan for employees, are insisting that the government not provide the abortion-causing drugs.
The Becket Fund, which is representing the nuns, said the justices “pressed the government with hard questions on why it is trying to force the sisters to violate their religious beliefs when it has chosen to exempt so many other employers from the mandate.”
Justice Ginsburg said “no one doubts for a moment” the sincerity of the Little Sisters’ beliefs.
Other justices, the Becket Fund said, expressed concern the government was “hijacking” the Little Sisters’ health plan and making them “subsidiz[e] conduct which they believe to be immoral.”
“Yet,” the Becket Fund said, “the government specifically stated that it not only believes it can force its scheme on the Little Sisters, but also on churches and other houses of worship – making them help provide ‘seamless’ coverage for services like the week-after pill.”
Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund and lead Becket attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, argued the government “has many ways to deliver its services without using the Little Sisters of the Poor – alternatives that it says are as easy to use as shopping on Amazon or Kayak, and which it has already extended to millions of Americans.”
“Yet the government admitted today that it is forcing the sisters to violate their sincerely held beliefs,” Rienzi said. “That’s wrong and unnecessary. As Paul Clement said in concluded oral argument today, the Little Sisters are happy to be conscientious objectors, but they can’t agree to be conscientious collaborators.”
The sisters are the lead plaintiffs in a Supreme Court case that incorporated several related cases challenging Obamacare’s abortion-pill mandate.
According to NBC News, the court appeared headed for a 4-4 tie, a scenario on which WND reported last weekend.
The arguments consolidated cases from the Third, Fifth, 10th, and D.C. circuits, and if the vote ends up 4-4, due to the absence of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the lower-court rulings, most of which favored the administration, will stand. In case of a tie, three of the decisions would favor the government, and the fourth would not, leaving a conflict among the circuits.
NBC noted the White House has exempted churches but has refused to exempt other nonprofit groups like the nuns.
A recent filing by the nuns charged the White House believes it can make anyone, including churches, pay for abortion.
Regarding the exemption for churches, the brief explained: “The government insists that it does so as a matter of administrative grace and ‘special solicitude’ for churches, and that nothing in RFRA requires the exemption. Thus, in the government’s view, it could eliminate the exemption for churches tomorrow. That is astonishing enough, but it fails to grapple with the reality that by granting the exemption the government has already conceded that it does not have a compelling interest in demanding compliance from religious employers who are more likely to hire people who share their religious objections.
“But the government has no more compelling interest in demanding compliance from petitioners, who share the same statutory entitlement to hire people who share their own faith as the exempted employers,” the brief said. “Nor can the government escape the reality that the mandate’s secular exemptions and the government’s own concessions regarding them doom its least-restrictive means defense. The government claims that asking whatever subset of petitioners’ employees who actually want contraceptive coverage to obtain it through an exchange would ‘inflict tangible injury’ that cannot be tolerated. But the government itself champions the exchanges not a dozen pages earlier in its brief as one of several acceptable paths through which the tens of millions of employees whose employers are already exempt can obtain contraceptive coverage.”
NBC reported the court’s conservatives appeared to agree, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying, “Hijacking is an apt description of what the government wants.”
The report said Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on controversial issues, used the same term.
At issue is whether the Obama White House can demand the nuns pay for abortions even though the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act appears to forbid it.
Plaintiffs lawyers argued the need for those payments from the nuns is not compelling – a requirement of the RFRA for the government to impose a rights violations – because about one-third of the country already is exempted.
Solicitor General Donald Verrelli argued on behalf of Obamacare that the nuns want to stop the government from providing the abortion pills, but the nuns said nothing’s further from the truth: They just cannot, because of their faith, be involved, and that includes the government’s solution of signing over authority to do it.
The nuns, a 175-year-old order, care for the elderly poor.
“We don’t understand why the government is doing this when there is an easy solution that doesn’t involve us – it can provide these services on the exchanges,” said Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, mother provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor, in a statement made outside the court.
“It’s also hard to understand why the government is doing this when one third of all Americans aren’t even covered by this mandate, and … yet the government threatens us with fines of $70 million per year if we don’t comply. … All we ask, is that we can continue to do this work.”
A decision is expected in June.
Dozens of organizations representing faith traditions ranging from Catholic, Baptist and Orthodox Jewish to Muslim and Indian tribes, have sided with the nuns.
Supporters also include more than 200 members of Congress from both parties.
Other cases to be affected by the decision include Christian Brothers Services, Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust, Houston Baptist and East Texas Baptist Universities, Reaching Souls International, Truett-McConnell College, GuideStone Financial Services of the Southern Baptist Convention, Geneva College, Southern Nazarene University, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington and the Most Reverend David A. Zubik.
Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Southern Nazarene University, Geneva College and others in the fight with Obamacare, said the government “shouldn’t be allowed to force religious organizations to choose between providing life-destroying drugs and devices or paying massive, unsustainable penalties.”
“The government has many other ways to make sure women are able to obtain these drugs, but it has chosen the unlawful and unnecessary path of forcing people of faith to participate in acts that violate their deepest convictions,” he said. “Thousands of businesses and organizations, like Pepsi and Exxon, are already exempt from the administration’s abortion-pill mandate for reasons that have nothing to do with religion, yet the government is targeting people of faith – forcing them to comply with an unjust edict that tears at the very heart of who they are.”
Everett Piper, president of ADF client Oklahoma Wesleyan University, said the Wesleyan church “has stood firm for human freedom and the dignity of women since its inception some 150 years ago.”
“I never imagined I would find myself at the Supreme Court, forced to defend the teachings of Christianity and our church that form the basis and core of Oklahoma Wesleyan University’s purpose and mission.,” he said.
“If the government had wanted to, they could have set up plans on the state and federal health exchanges that would allow women to access these particular drugs and devices. In fact, there is nothing stopping the government from doing that even now. Instead, the Obama administration has exempted billion-dollar corporations for reasons that have nothing to do with religion and is targeting Christian institutions like us, under threat of millions of dollars in crippling fines, to carry life-ending drugs like the week-after pill in our employee health insurance plans – against the beliefs and mission of our school and against the beliefs of the Oklahoma Wesleyan women who are eligible for these plans.”
Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., a former nurse for 40 years and chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, said: “You know, President Obama famously called his healthcare law ‘A new set of rules that treat everyone fairly and honestly.’ We see very clearly today that nothing could be further from the truth. Under Obamacare’s coercive HHS mandate, the Little Sisters of the Poor face an impossible choice: either deny their deeply held beliefs and provide coverage for drugs they deem to be morally objectionable, or face up to $70 million in government penalties. Meanwhile, corporations like Exxon and Pepsi are exempted from the mandate altogether. Only in Washington would anyone call this ‘fair.’”
Alveda King, director of Priests for Life’s African American outreach program Civil Rights for the Unborn, said the lawsuit she and Priests for Life are bringing before the Supreme Court recalls the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 60s.
“When I was growing up, the government denied my basic civil rights because of the color of my skin,” said King. “Today, the government is trying to deny my God-given right to practice my faith for reasons that also make no sense. The oral arguments to be held before the Supreme Court this Wednesday in the case that Priests for Life, I, and many others are bringing against the HHS mandate is really a continuation of the Civil Rights movement I knew as a child.”
Hear statement at the court on Wednesday, courtesy Alveda King:
WND reported when the plaintiffs in the case argued, “If all the government needed from the Little Sisters was to know that ‘they believe that it is religiously wrong for them to facilitate the provision of contraceptive procedures … then there would be no need to continue threatening them with massive fines.”
They explained the weakness of the government’s argument that the groups can simply sign over authority to the Obama administration.
“The religious significance of signing a piece of paper will often depend on its consequences. Signing an autograph and signing a death warrant are not the same,” the brief informed the court.
A friend-of-the-court brief from the Thomas More Law Center said if the appeal is lost, the government “becomes the head of every religious denomination in the country by its assumed authority to determine what is in fact a sin.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/justices-hear-case-of-feds-hijacking-nuns/
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