Category: News

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:

Priests for Life and Catholic televsion network sue federal government

Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic broadcasting corporation founded by a nun, Mother Angelica, has sued the US federal government because the Obama administration’s birth control mandate will force it to provide insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives and embryocides.  Priests for Life, a Catholic group dedicated to pro-life work, including support for Catholic teaching against contraception, has announced that it will sue for the same reason.

 

Virtually all US Catholic bishops have denounced HHS ‘contraceptive’ mandate

Virtually every Catholic bishop in the United States who heads a diocese has spoken out against the Obama administration’s regulation that will force employers to provide insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives, and embryocidal drugs.  Many have stated that they will not comply with the law. [ See Map of institutions resisting the HHS ‘contraceptive’ mandate]

 

New bill in US Senate to stop HHS regulation

Senators Joe Manchin and Mario Rubio have introduced “Bill S2092 -the Religious Freedom Protection Act of 2012.” The bill is drafted to stop the Department of Health and Human Services regulation enacted by the Obama administration for the purpose of forcing employers to pay for insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives, and drugs.  The bill offers protection to individuals and entities opposed to facilitating such services for reasons of conscience or religion.