Category: News Releases

ADF, Geneva College to reveal lawsuit against Obama mandate Tuesday

NEWS RELEASE

Alliance Defence  Fund

WHO: ADF Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor, Geneva College President Ken Smith

WHAT: Press conference announcing new lawsuit against Obama birth control/abortifacient mandate

WHEN: Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 1:30 p.m. EST

WHERE: Geneva College, 3200 College Ave., Skye Lounge Student Center, Beaver Falls

BEAVER FALLS, Pa. — Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor will join Geneva College President Ken Smith Tuesday at a press conference to announce a new federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s unconstitutional mandate that religious employers provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception to employees regardless of religious or moral objections.

“People of faith shouldn’t be punished by the state for following that faith in making decisions for themselves or their organizations,” said Baylor. “Every American should know that a government with the power to do this to anyone can do this–and worse–to everyone.”

ADF attorney sound bite: Gregory S. Baylor

“At Geneva College, we only have one Lord, and he does not live in Washington, D.C.,” Smith said. “The First Amendment protects Americans from mandates that require us to act against our own convictions. We find the mandate to provide our faculty, staff, and students with insurance that provides pills to abort babies totally abhorrent and unacceptable. The government shouldn’t be able to force anyone to buy or sell insurance that subsidizes morally objectionable treatments.”

The lawsuit, Geneva College v. Sebelius, will be filed in federal court Tuesday.

Geneva College is a comprehensive Christian college of the arts, sciences, and professional studies founded in the tradition of the Reformed Presbyterian faith. According to its website, Geneva provides “an academically rigorous education comprised of distinctive and innovative courses. Geneva offers over 40 undergraduate majors and seven master’s degree programs.”

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

Michigan Takes Lead Role in Lawsuits Against Unconstitutional Obama Health Care Mandate

Schuette Heads Up Multi-State Effort With Becket Fund To Defend Religious Liberty, First Amendment

NEWS RELEASE

Attorney General of Michigan

Contact: John Sellek or Joy Yearout, 517-373-8060

LANSING – Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette today announced Michigan will be the lead state in an effort to defend religious liberty in three separate lawsuits filed by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on behalf of two colleges and a religious broadcasting network challenging onerous administrative health care regulations recently handed down by the Obama administration.

“We cannot compromise religious liberty.  We cannot undermine constitutional protections.  We cannot trample freedom of religion in the United States of America,” said Schuette.  “This mandate is an unconscionable intrusion on religious liberty and undermines the constitutional rights of millions of Americans with deeply held beliefs.

“Not only will many schools, hospitals and charities be ordered to provide services that violate their conscience, but to add insult to injury, they will have to pay for those they find morally repugnant.  This is a radical attack on the First Amendment that cannot stand.”

As described in The Becket Fund’s complaints filed in federal courts in the District of Columbia, Colorado and Alabama, the challenges relate to Obamacare regulations that force thousands of religious organizations to violate their deepest beliefs by mandating what the organizations must include in their employee health plans, or face steep government fines.  Although the Obama administration has provided thousands of exemptions for other groups, including many large corporations, it has persistently refused to give the same accommodation to religious organizations exercising their First Amendment freedoms.  Schuette’s office will coordinate the drafting and filing of an amicus brief in defense of religious liberty.

On January 20, 2012, the Obama Administration announced that it would not change its mandate forcing religious employers to purchase and provide health care services that violate their religious beliefs and moral convictions.  The decision was announced in spite of concerns expressed by a wide spectrum of religious leaders and employers.

The cases challenging the rule are Bemont Abbey College v.  Sebelius, Colorado Christian University v. Sebelius, and Eternal Word Television Netwprl v. Sebelius. A briefing schedule has not yet been issued in those cases yet, but Michigan expects to file its briefs later this year.

Schuette’s involvement in The Becket Fund cases is the latest effort to defend religious liberty for Michigan citizens:

·In 2011, Schuette file joined The Becket Fund to file an amicus brief on behalf of seven other states in support of religious liberty in a significant case involving the right of religious organizations to manage their religious employees without government interference.  In January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously (9-0) upheld the right of religious organizations to manage their religious employees without government interference in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission et al.

· Schuette also filed an amicus brief in support of Julea Ward, a former Eastern Michigan University student who is suing the university in federal court for violating her constitutional rights after she was dismissed from a graduate counseling program due to her religious beliefs.  On January 27, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th District agreed Ward had a right to trial and reversed the lower court ruling dismissing her case.

Christian Medical Association: Contraception mandate fits pattern of assaults on conscience and religious liberty

NEWS RELEASE

Christian Medical Association

Washington, DC–February 9, 2012: The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association today issued a statement asserting that the government’s mandate of contraception coverage nationwide fits a growing pattern of assaulting and restricting First Amendment freedoms of conscience and faith.

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens noted, “The government contraception mandate violates the First Amendment rights and sensibilities of any individual or organization morally committed to life-honoring faith principles. The coercion likewise tramples the conscience rights of health care professionals ethically committed to the historic Hippocratic oath. And it fits a deplorable pattern of disregard for First Amendment freedoms.

“In the past three years, people of faith and conscience have witnessed the gutting of the only federal regulation protecting the exercise of conscience in health care; the denial of federal grant funds for aiding human trafficking victims because a faith-based organization refused to participate in abortion; the administration’s lobbying of the Supreme Court to restrict faith-based organizations’ hiring rights; and a coercive contraceptive mandate that imposes the government’s ideology on the faith-based and pro-life communities.

“The contraception mandate’s affront to religious freedom actually extends well beyond the Catholic Church, since many physicians and patients outside the Catholic tradition hold that it is morally or ethically wrong to risk ending the life of a developing human being by using pills such as ella and the morning-after pill. These pills are falsely promoted as ordinary contraceptives despite clear FDA label warnings that ‘ella may also work by preventing attachment (implantation) to the uterus’ and that the morning-after pill (Plan B) “may inhibit implantation by altering the endometrium.'”

“To force every American to subsidize an ideological agenda that many find morally or ethically abhorrent is the antithesis of American First Amendment freedoms of religion and conscience.

“The First Amendment issue of religious and conscience liberty impacts Americans of all political stripes. Conscience freedoms protect Americans left, right and center, on issues ranging from abortion to the death penalty, from participation in war to the right to protest political actions such as we are witnessing now.

“Every American, regardless of political persuasion, should be protesting these assaults on our freedoms and contacting legislators to enact conscience-protecting legislation such as the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, introduced in the House by Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb. 1st) and in the Senate by Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

“As Dr. Martin Luther King reminds us, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'”

To remedy the assault on religious liberty and conscience freedoms, the Christian Medical Association supports the following legislation:

Rubio Introduces Bill To Repeal ObamaCare Mandate Against Religious Freedom

NEWS RELEASE

Office of Marco Rubio

Rubio: “This is a common sense bill that simply says the government can’t force religious organizations to abandon the fundamental tenets of their faith because the government says so.”

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) today introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012, a bill to repeal a new ObamaCare mandate that violates the religious liberties and conscience rights of faith-based institutions by forcing them to offer employees insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a new mandate that would require most church-affiliated organizations to offer their workers private insurance coverage without out-of-pocket charges for birth control. The administration ignored efforts by numerous faith-based organizations to be granted an exemption on religious grounds.

“The Obama Administration’s obsession with forcing mandates on the American people has now reached a new low by violating the conscience rights and religious liberties of our people,” said Rubio. “Under this President, we have a government that has grown too big, too costly and now even more overbearing by forcing religious entities to abandon their beliefs. This is a common sense bill that simply says the government can’t force religious organizations to abandon the fundamental tenets of their faith because the government says so.”

The text of the legislation is available here.

National Conscience Protection Grassroots Campaign Launched

NEWS RELEASE

Catholic Advocate

Contact: Matt Smith (202) 521-9828

Catholic Laity can receive toolkit to contact Congress 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Catholic Advocate, a leading grassroots organization in Washington, D.C., today launched a nationwide campaign providing resources for faithful Catholics wanting to speak out against the recently announced Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) final rule affecting conscience protections in health care coverage. The ruling forces organizations providing health plans to cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization regardless of their religious beliefs.

“One of the options to address this attack on people of faith is to directly contact our elected officials in Congress to let them know our dissatisfaction with this decision,” said Catholic Advocate President Matt Smith. “Our goal is to have at least 100,000 faithful Catholics participate each month until Congress acts.”

On the day of the HHS announcement, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the laity to this action when he said, “Let your elected leaders know that you want religious liberty and rights of conscience restored and that you want the administration’s contraceptive mandate rescinded.”

Catholic Advocate is asking for at least one leader per parish in this country to sign up at www.ProtectOurConscience.org. There they will have access to a grassroots toolbox to answer the call to rally faithful laity to reinstate our conscience rights.

“There are 17,782 parishes in the United States,” added Smith. “If faithful Catholics were able to average 115 letters per parish to their Representative and each Senator, Capitol Hill would receive over six million contacts on this issue. We would send a powerful message that cannot be ignored.”

A primary focus of this nationwide grassroots campaign is building additional support for H.R. 1179/S. 1467 – the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act introduced by Representative Jeff Fortenberry (Nebraska, 1st District) and Senator Roy Blunt (Missouri) respectively.

The legislation amends the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) “to permit a health plan to decline coverage of specific items and services that are contrary to the religious beliefs of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan or the purchaser or beneficiary (in the case of individual coverage) without penalty.” It also applies similar guidance to state health insurance exchange programs and becomes retroactive to when PPACA was signed into law by President Obama.

[Text of release (.pdf)]

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