For the fifth time in a row, the Supreme Court has stopped the federal government’s contraceptive mandate. In an order issued last night, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito prevented the federal government from enforcing its contraceptive mandate against a range of Pennsylvania-based religious organizations including Catholic Charities and other Catholic schools and social service organizations connected with the Diocese of Erie and the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Supreme Court has previously protected the Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, and the University of Notre Dame. Justice Alito’s order is similar to the preliminary order Justice Sotomayor provided to the Little Sisters of the Poor on New Year’s Eve in 2013.
The order requires the government to brief the Supreme Court next week on why it should be allowed to fine these organizations for refusing to distribute abortion-inducing drugs and devices and other contraceptives. Lori Windham, Senior Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (which represents the Little Sisters of the Poor and several other clients challenging the mandate) issued the following statement:
How many times must the government lose in court before it gets the message? For years now the government has been claiming that places like Catholic Charities and the Little Sisters of the Poor are not “religious employers” worthy of an exemption. That argument has always been absurd. Every time a religious plaintiff has gone to the Supreme Court for protection from the government’s discriminatory mandate the Court has protected them. That’s what happened to the Little Sisters of the Poor, Wheaton College, Notre Dame, and Hobby Lobby. The government really needs to give up on its illegal and unnecessary mandate. The federal bureaucracy has lots of options for distributing contraceptives–they don’t need to coerce nuns and priests to do it for them.
The Supreme Court will be considering a similar case involving an order of Nashville Dominican nuns and several Tennessee- and Michigan-based Catholic charities at a conference of the Justices on April 24.
Sasha Bill KwapinskiApril 17, 2015
This is an example of why I contribute to the Becket Fund and will continue to do so. I encourage others to consider doing likewise.
David H MyersApril 17, 2015
Who is issuing these mandates? How do I write them and tell them to back off? The constitution forbids the Federal Government from forming a religion or preferring one religion over another to the end of serving those who pledge allegiance to the government's preferred religion to enjoy more protection under the law. By inference, the opposite is also true. The government cannot select a religion or religions that it will NOT support, and then punish citizens for participating in said religion(s).