Washington D.C., Nov 24, 2017 / 03:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Little Sisters of the Poor are returning to court to defend their exemption from the federal contraception mandate, after two states filed lawsuits challenging the exemption.
“No one needs nuns in order to get contraceptives, and no one needs these guys reigniting the last administration’s divisive and unnecessary culture war,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket Law and lead attorney for the Little Sisters.
The Little Sisters of Poor are religious sisters dedicated to living with and caring for the elderly poor. In recent years, they have been embroiled in a lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate, which requires them to offer an employee health plan covering contraception, sterilizations and some drugs that can cause early abortions. Catholic teaching holds contraception and abortion to be gravely immoral.
Last month, the Trump administration announced changes to the mandate, including a broad religious exemption that offered protection from its demands to the Little Sisters and other objecting religious non-profits.
“The new rule should mean that their lawsuit against the federal government will soon end,” said Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing the sisters.
However, the states of California and Pennsylvania are now suing, challenging the Little Sisters’ religious exemption.
The HHS contraceptive mandate, issued under the Affordable Care Act, required that cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and some drugs that can cause abortions be included in employer health plans.
The original mandate had only a narrow exemption for houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries. Following a wave of lawsuits on the grounds of religious liberty, the Obama administration released a “religious freedom accommodation” for faith-based non-profits that were not directly affiliated with a house of worship.
Under the accommodation, these groups could send a form to the government outlining their objection to the mandate, which would trigger a government directive to an insurer or third party administrator to provide the cost-free contraceptive coverage in employee health plans.
However, many groups argued that the accommodation still required them to participate in the provision of products that they believed to be immoral. Furthermore, they argued that, despite the government’s insistence that birth control products are free for insurers to provide, the cost of the objectionable products would ultimately be passed on to them in the form of higher premiums.
More than 300 plaintiffs filed lawsuits against the mandate. In 2014, Hobby Lobby, a craft supply retailer owned by a Christian family, won a case against the mandate in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.
In 2016, a bundle of cases challenging the mandate and its accommodation made its way to the Supreme Court – including the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and other Christian colleges and universities.
After oral arguments in the case in March of 2016, the Supreme Court, in a rare move in the middle of a case, directed both the government and the plaintiffs to submit briefs explaining if, and how, a conclusion could be reached providing the contraceptive coverage while at the same time respecting the religious freedom of the non-profits.
Both parties submitted briefs, and in May of 2016, the Court voided the federal circuit court decisions involving the plaintiffs, and sent the cases back to their respective federal courts. The Court directed the lower courts to give all parties time to come to an agreement that satisfied their needs.
In October 2017, the Trump administration announced a modification of the mandate. While the original rule remains in place, a much broader exemption is granted to non-profits and some for-profit companies, if they can demonstrate a religiously-based objection to the mandate’s demands.
A moral exemption to the mandate is also permitted, although not for publicly-traded for-profit companies. The moral exemption would protect, for example, secular crisis pregnancy centers, which object to the mandate on moral rather than religious grounds.
The “accommodation” offered to non-profits by the Obama administration is now voluntary. Non-profits can have their insurer or third party administrator offer the coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and drugs that can cause abortions, but they do not have to do so under law.
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Why buy the cow, when the milk is free? That age old question in the continual cycle of life, in the rise and fall of every civilization.
Don’t take no rocket scientist to read Ab Chuput jabbing and ridiculing to be President Biden. That recognize anti-Catholic ways are from the top as Chuput driving away potential vocations, priests if anybody is..
No real family person would be or attempt today to be in politics, or religion, in those of bad or own self elevating ways will merely attack them..
That is proven by the martrydom of Kennedy, the good cant win…
God bless Mr. President Biden for trying, and we pray that God guides him.. That as a Catholic should have been ab Chuput only comment, rather than condemnation.
Dude, you are batting about .060. Might want to adjust your stance and grip.
That high? And you can actually figure out what he’s trying to say? Must be all those years of being an editor.
I read a lot of academic stuff, so I’ve learned to wade through repetitive, inane, and mostly incoherent writing.
Email address to the Archbishop and vocation director Catholic Archdiocese of Florentine
Perhaps Florence should reach out to the many African seminarians. Ive read additionally that numbers of young men in Africa wish to enter the seminary but economics won’t allow it.
I have heard critics of the Church many times sneer “Those old men at the Vatican banned contraception and want many children born so there will be priests” (and presumably monks and nuns).
.
Admittedly, there is something to that. If a region has a fertility rate of only 1.3 or so, there will not be children born to do any job, not just priest. Back in 1997, that rate was 1.22, so it has been many, many years Italy has lacked children.
Some bishops seem to be able to foster vocations. Some orders seem to be thriving. What are they doing right?
(Not sure if this is true in Europe. I see on Anglican Unscripted that (orthodox) Anglicans are setting up missions in Europe).
May the Lord of the harvest inspire and invite zealous laborers to toil in his vineyard.
How can I contact the vocation director if I’m inspired to join his diocese as a seminarian?
Greeting!
I am interested to join your diocese. How can i get the vocations director’s contact.
Greetings
If one is inspired to become a Priest in the Archdiocese of Florence, whow should he go about it?
Request to join your seminary
Good morning.
I am interested to join your diocese. How can get the vocations director’s contact