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Mandate Controversy Continues ACLJ filed the lawsuit on behalf of Frank O’Brien, Jr., a St. Louis businessman and practicing Catholic, and O’Brien Industrial Holdings, which employees 87 people, on March 15. The lawsuit argued that the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that most employers of 50 or more employees must offer health insurance that includes coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception without co-pays, violates O’Brien’s First Amendment rights by infringing on his ability to exercise his deeply-held religious beliefs. Last week, Judge Carol E. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted the Obama Administration’s Motion to Dismiss the challenge. In her dismissal, Judge Jackson rejected “the proposition that requiring indirect financial support of a practice, from which plaintiff [O’Brien] himself abstains according to his religious principles, constitutes a substantial burden on plaintiff’s religious exercise.” According to Francis J. Manion, an ACLJ attorney, “The court saw no difference between paying the salary of an employee who might use that salary to go out and buy things the boss objects to, and having the boss buy the objectionable things directly and hand them to the employee.” “We believe, of course, that this reasoning is fundamentally flawed,” wrote David French on ACLJ’s website. “Employees’ consciences are implicated by the items they purchase with their own money (the employer has no hold on funds once paid in salary); while employers’ consciences are implicated by the items they purchase with company funds.” Manion went on to note that “the government itself has acknowledged that the HHS Mandate does, in fact, impose a substantial burden on religious believers. After all, that’s why the Mandate as currently written already contains a ‘religious employer exemption,’ albeit a weak and limited one. The Obama Administration recognizes the burden imposed by the Mandate. The fight has been over whether and in which cases that burden is outweighed by the other interests the Mandate seeks to advance. Nobody involved in this prolonged public controversy has seriously contended that that the Mandate does not burden religious believers. Until now.” ACLJ attorneys expect the Eighth Circuit Court to hear the case’s appeal “within a matter of months.” In related news, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the contraceptive mandate on behalf of Tyndale House Publishers, which is one of the world’s largest publishers of Bibles and Christian digital media. Because the publisher is a for-profit company, it does not qualify for a religious exemption from the HHS mandate. While Tyndale House Publishers is a for-profit company, it is owned by the non-profit Tyndale House Foundation. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It is the third lawsuit filed by ADF challenging the controversial mandate, and one of at least 31 lawsuits filed by more than 80 plaintiffs against the mandate. Related resources: Copyright © 2012. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.
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