Category Archives: ADF in the News

National Review Online: Carrie Kolesar of Seneca Hardwood Lumber Co. in Cranberry, Pa., tells National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez in an interview. “No American should be faced with a decision like that,” she continues. Kolesar is a part owner of this family business established in 1961 . . . A few weeks after the mandate was finalized, I saw that Alliance Defending Freedom was taking a case for a private business and I contacted them for advice regarding our situation. The HHS mandate has put us in a situation where we can’t provide insurance for ourselves and our employees without violating our moral obligations and freedom of conscience. My parents, my siblings, and I believe that the public and our government need to be more aware of the problems caused when we don’t protect freedom of conscience.

Andy Newland and Matt Bowman appeared on Dateline Washington, Radio America with Greg Corombos to discuss the Newland ruling. | MP3 audio 7:05 mins

Hugh Hewitt at the National Catholic Register: With the help of the superb lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund), the Newlands sought relief from President Barack Obama’s mandate, citing both the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the 1993 U.S. Constitution . . . The Newlands have shown the way and are to be thanked for their courage. Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom or other groups like the Becket Fund (which is representing the Register’s parent company, EWTN) will evaluate any case that any private employer may want to press to free themselves from Obamacare’s imposition on their genuine religious beliefs.

Denver Post: “The principle decided here is applicable to all of the cases raising the issue of can the government justify forcing people to choose between their faith, and engaging in business or serving the community,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of Christian lawyers.

World Magazine: Dale Schowengerdt with the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) is one of those lawyers working with the House to defend DOMA in lower courts. In one challenge to DOMA in Philadelphia, he found himself standing on the side of the aisle where the Justice Department lawyer would normally stand, defending U.S. laws, while the Justice Department lawyer stood on the other side of the aisle. “When they made the announcement [that they wouldn't defend the law], we thought they’d just sit on the sidelines,” he said. “It was very strange to have the DOJ lawyer get up and attack the law.” [more]

Jane Norton at the Denver Post: Fortunately, a court just issued the first-ever order against Obama’s mandate, preventing it from being applied to the Newland family while their lawsuit, filed by their attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, goes forward. And we’d all better hope the Newlands prevail in the end. (Jane Norton was lieutenant governor of Colorado from 2003 to 2007. Her husband, Michael Norton, is a member of the legal team representing Hercules Industries.) [Jane was also a regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1988-1993 for six states, including Colorado.]

CNSNews: Gary Marx, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, praised a federal judge in Colorado for issuing a temporary injunction on Friday, stopping the Obama administration from enforcing the regulation against Hercules Industries, a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business owned by a Catholic family. “Confidence in the system and hope for religious liberty was mildly restored when a federal district judge issued a temporary injunction blocking Barack Obama’s health care mandate from compelling a business to provide insurance coverage of sterilization, contraception, and abortion-inducing drugs,” Marx said. [see also powerful Brent Bozell III quote]

Paul Newland and Matt Bowman appear in the Fox News video interview here.

Steve Aden appeared on the Schilling Show to discuss the ruling. | MP3 audio 8:48 mins

Alan Sears appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the Newland case. | MP3 audio 8:42 mins

Matt Bowman appeared on the radio to discuss the Newland ruling. | Drew Mariani Show, MP3 audio 16:40 mins | Al Kresta in the Afternoon Show, MP3 audio 11:49 mins | News and Views with Chuck Bates, MP3 audio 13:08 mins

Jonathan Lee and Matt Mellema, participants in the Blackstone Legal Fellowship appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss their experiences. | MP3 audio 9:05 mins

NC Register: “We’re very pleased the judge recognized that religious freedom applies to families and their activities in business and that a mandate that violates religious freedom cannot be imposed against faithful Christian believers,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of Christian attorneys. Alliance Defending Freedom was formerly called the Alliance Defense Fund.

Catholic Online (includes video): As the August 1, 2012 date for the initial implementation requirements of the HHS mandate drew near, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund) issued an opinion advising Catholic Colleges and other Church related institutions of the a “temporary one year safe harbor” which could delay the consequences of their non-compliance for one year . . . However, the Alliance Defending Freedom was doing more than just helping Colleges and other organizations delay the punitive effects of this mandate. They were busy on another front, showing themselves to be outstanding religious liberty lawyers.

Christian Post: Earlier this year, the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit against Rockdale on behalf of New Generation over the county’s zoning laws, which forbid churches from meeting on property smaller than three acres. “Government officials should not use zoning restrictions to close down religious services of small, start-up churches, so we commend the county for agreeing to a court order that allows this church to meet while the case moves forward,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley in a statement. “It’s unconstitutional and a violation of federal law to target churches with these kinds of zoning restrictions. Small ministries like this one shouldn’t be forced underground simply because they can’t afford a property of more than three acres.”

LifeNews: Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Steven Aden talked with LifeNews about the ruling: “Every innocent life deserves to be protected. That certainly includes the most vulnerable of all: children in the womb who experience horrific pain when being torn apart in the womb during a late-term abortion like those this law prohibits. This law also protects mothers from dangerous late-term abortions and their tremendous psychological consequences. The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights, who filed this lawsuit, apparently don’t care about any of that, preferring to pursue their own agenda. The court was right to thwart their attempts to stop this law.

Steve Aden at Townhall: In March 2011, South Dakota’s Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the Abortion Informed Consent Statute into law. Although the constitutionality of the law was immediately challenged, and Planned Parenthood recoiled at the thought of mothers being informed of all the dangers abortion poses for them (in addition to the child), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that all major provisions of the law can stand.

NRLC News: Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith. For the time being, Hercules Industries will be able to do just that,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama administration ultimately has its way. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living. Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

FRC Washington Update: Because of the ruling, at least one family-owned business, Hercules Industries, won’t feel the sting of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) war on religious liberty when the order takes effect this Wednesday. Thanks to our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Newland family has three months to take its lawsuit to the next level before the administration’s mandate, requiring it to offer abortion pills, contraception, and sterilization to the company’s 265 employees, takes effect.

Jordan Lorence on Engaging the Issues with Jeremy Dys of the WV Family Policy Council to discuss the Bronx Household case. | MP3 audio 21:28 mins

Michael Norton on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss the suit. | MP3 audio mins 13:47

David Hacker apeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this: ADF: Calif. student free of disciplinary hearing, but not of unconstitutional speech policy. | MP3 audio 8:30 mins

Michael J. Norton appeared on The What’s Up Radio Program with Terry Lowry to discuss the Thayer fraud suit versus Planned Parenthood. | MP3 audio 12:56 mins

Matt Bowman on the Ladona Harvey Show on KOGO FM 95.7 to discuss the Newland case.  | MP3 audio 8:42 mins

Steven Aden at LifeNews: The Left, by its very nature, is ideologically driven. Ideology has a tendency to crowd out reason for the sake of vision.
Witness the fact that certain members of the Left now want Americans to believe the Obama abortion pill mandate—which violates religious freedom—is, in fact, an exercise of religious freedom.

Newsmax: In its brief responding to the Justice Department on behalf of the Newland family, the Alliance Defending Freedom said, according to CNSNews.com, “The government argues that the Newlands forfeited their right to religious liberty as soon as they endeavored to earn their living by running a corporation.” “Nothing in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s decisions, or federal law requires — or even suggests — that families forfeit their religious liberty protection when they try to earn a living, such as by operating a corporate business,” they argued.

Reuters: “Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith,” Matthew Bowman, a lawyer for Hercules with the Alliance Defense Fund, said in a statement.

Michael Foust at Baptist Press: The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the company. “This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living,” ADF attorney Matt Bowman said in a statement. “Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

Wall Street Journal (via Google): What’s significant about Friday’s decision is that it opens an avenue for nonreligious employers to challenge the requirement . . . The decision by Judge Kane only applies to the heating-and-cooling company. But other small businesses could apply for similar relief, said Matt Bowman, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the Newlands in the case. Mr. Bowman also said that the decision would boost other challenges to the contraception provisions. Religious universities and charities, including the University of Notre Dame, have also sued the administration over the requirements. The Obama administration has said it will work with Catholic-affiliated institutions to try to reach a compromise, prompting two judges to toss out those cases. “Right now, the first judge to rule on the merits of religious freedom ruled that religious freedom is more important than government mandates,” said Mr. Bowman.

Ken Kuklowski at Breitbart: On August 1, Obamacare’s latest outrage goes into effect as the “HHS Mandate” takes effect, and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) just scored the first victory in religious liberty against this authoritarian decree days before its implementation . . . This victory is by no means final, but it’s the first of its kind. As ADF’s lawyer on this case, Matt Bowman, said today, “Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith. Hercules Industries will be able to do just that.” He’s right, and now we’ll see if the courts continue to agree.

LifeNews: Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys obtained the first-ever order against the mandate on behalf of Hercules Industries and the Catholic family that owns it. The administration opposed the order, arguing, contrary to the U.S. Constitution, that people of faith forfeit their religious liberty once they engage in business . . . Still, leading pro-life advocates like Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life applauded the ruling. “This decision marks the beginning of the end of the unjust and unconstitutional HHS mandate. Even though the Aug. 1 deadline for compliance is still in effect for organizations like Priests for Life, it’s good news that the suit filed by the owners of Hercules Industries has been successful in holding off, at least temporarily, this mandate that is so clearly a violation of the religious freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of our country. This gives us reason to be optimistic as our own lawsuit progresses,” he told LifeNews.

Ed Whelan at National Review Bench Memos: That said, the lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom (the new name for the Alliance Defense Fund) deserve high praise for their fine work presenting this case on behalf of plaintiffs.

GOPUSA: “This is the very first ruling on whether Obamacare can violate religious freedom and the judge said no,” said Matt Bowman, a lawyer for legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund.

Jennifer Marshall and Dominique Ludvigson at Heritage Foundation: The Foundry: Colorado federal District Court Judge and Carter appointee John L. Kane granted a preliminary injunction Friday on behalf of Hercules Industries in Newland v. Sebelius. The injunction secured by Newland’s attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom is the first to be ordered by a federal court judge in litigation surrounding the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate under Obamacare.

Eurasia Review: Michael Norton, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said the lawsuit is “very important” because it determines “whether family-owned small businesses have the freedom to practice their faith as they wish in the public square and in the public arena, or whether they will be obliged to offer health insurance coverage that violates that faith.” “Our view is that every American should be free to live and do business according to their faith. They should not have to choose between their faith and doing what some bureaucrat or politician thinks ought to be the way they live out their faith,” Norton said in a July 26 interview.

Human Events: Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys obtained the first-ever order against the mandate on behalf of Hercules Industries and the Catholic family that owns it. The administration opposed the order, arguing, contrary to the U.S. Constitution, that people of faith forfeit their religious liberty once they engage in business . . . “Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith. For the time being, Hercules Industries will be able to do just that,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman after the decision. Bowman added, “The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama administration ultimately has its way. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living. Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

NC Register: The Alliance Defending Freedom legal group sought the injunction as part of its lawsuit on behalf of Hercules Industries, a Colorado-based manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning units. “We’re thrilled,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “This is the first court to answer the question of whether Obamacare can be used to violate religious freedom, and the answer is ‘No,’” he told Catholic News Agency July 27. “The very first ruling on the question of religious freedom was a ruling stating that religious freedom prevails over government attempts to force believers to choose between their faith and their livelihood,” Bowman said.

FRC at PR Newswire on Market Watch: The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the family in Newland v. Sebelius . . . Ken Klukowski, J.D., director of FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty, added: “While this is only the first round of litigation, this is a significant win as it reaffirms that millions of Americans cannot be coerced by the federal government into violating their religious faith. “Religious liberty goes far beyond merely the ‘freedom of worship’–an alarmingly narrow term the Obama administration has adopted–to include peacefully living out your faith in every area of life. For private business owners, that includes their right to showcase their faith through their business policies.”

Catholic News Agency: We’re thrilled,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “This is the first court to answer the question of whether Obamacare can be used to violate religious freedom, and the answer is ‘no,’” he told CNA July 27. “The very first ruling on the question of religious freedom was a ruling stating that religious freedom prevails over government attempts to force believers to choose between their faith and their livelihood,” Bowman said.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review: Matt Bowman is the legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, and today won an injunction in behalf of the Newland family of Denver, Colo. The Newlands are a Catholic family who run Hercules Industries, a business that distributes air-conditioning, heating, and ventilation supplies and does not provide contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs in its employee health plans. Without the injunction that was issued today by a Jimmy Carter–appointed judge, John Kane, the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring that coverage would have gone into effect, forcing them to choose between conscience and following this federal regulation (more here). Bowman explains the significance of the win . . .

Patheos: “Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith. For the time being, Hercules Industries will be able to do just that,” said Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama administration ultimately has its way. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living. Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

Kristi Buron Brown at Live Action News: I participated in a moot court session where Mr. Bowman gave his arguments and clearly laid out the Newlands’ case. Lest anyone think that the Newlands do not provide well for their employees, Hercules Industries’ current health care plan goes above and beyond many plans in its provisions for women. Mr. Bowman’s arguments detail the health benefits given to pregnant women, those who miscarry, and those with other reproductive-related issues. All the Newlands want is the freedom to adhere to their own religious beliefs concerning abortion, contraception, and sterilization – something that the First Amendment allows.

One News Now: Erik Stanley, an ADF attorney, explains why the county ordinance needs to be addressed. “Under the city’s rules, only non-religious groups and large, wealthy churches can find an adequate place to meet — and that just doesn’t make sense,” he says. “This is exactly why federal law protects churches from such arbitrary and subjective zoning decisions. We hope the city will change its zoning regulations and eliminate the need to continue this case.”

The Alert will not be published on Friday, July 27, 2012. Normal publication will resume Monday, July 30, 2012.

Nathan A. Cherry at the Engage Family Blog: It’s no wonder groups like The Family Policy Council of West Virginia and Alliance Defending Freedom are needed to keep watch over what is happening in schools and to protect children and parents rights. Just recently the West Virginia Board of Education decided to invite the homosexual advocacy group GLSEN into our schools to teach our elementary students. FPCWV president Jeremy Dys wrote of the decision

Nathan A. Cherry at the Engage Family Blog: Already we are seeing where churches and Christians are being penalized, persecuted, whatever you want to call it, because of their religious convictions on issues like marriage. The Alliance Defending Freedom is currently representing Elane Photography after the Christian owned and operated company was convicted of “sexual orientation” discrimination for refusing to provide services for a lesbian civil union. A recent ADF article on the topic wonders what implications for churches exist if this case, and others similar to it, is ultimately lost. The article say . . .

Citizen Link: Unfortunately, we are seeing battles like this all across the country,” said Brett Harvey, who is representing the county along with Senior Counsel Bryan Beauman, both with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Alan Sears at the Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: Charging Planned Parenthood with submitting “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid and failing to meet acceptable standards of medical practice, Alliance Defending Freedom sued the organization’s Iowa affiliate in March, 2011, on behalf of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Sue Thayer.

Heritage Foundation Culture Watch: Its attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom have requested an injunction barring the government’s enforcement of the mandate against the company by August 1, the date by which it would need to begin making changes to its plan to comply with the mandate.

Chattanoogan: The Alliance Defense Fund is representing the county at no charge. Christian activists June Griffin and Charles Wysong had sought to enter the case in behalf of the county’s position, but that was not allowed.

Terry Jeffrey at Townhall: William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith. The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral. This is exactly what President Barack Obama’s Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week . . . “It is well established that a corporation and its owners are wholly separate entities, and the Court should not permit the Newlands to eliminate that legal separation to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity or its employees,” said the Justice Department. This is just as if the Justice Department were to tell a family owned newspaper that it must publish editorials calling for a confiscatory estate tax, basing its coercion of the newspaper on the supposition (which lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom argue DOJ is by analogy making) that as a for-profit secular and incorporated employer, the paper has no First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

eChristianNews: An Alliance Defending Freedom legal letter has prompted the University of Alabama to update a policy to ensure that faith-based student groups will not be forced to allow opponents of their religious views into the membership or leadership of those groups. The university expressed its willingness to revise its guidelines “to reflect what has in fact been the practice” for many years at the university. “In America, students have the freedom to gather together around shared beliefs and to make membership and leadership decisions in keeping with that freedom,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Litigation Staff Matt Sharp. “We commend the University of Alabama for promptly updating its policy to protect that freedom in keeping with how the university says it has long operated.”

Ed Whelen at National Review Bench Memos: In trying to defend President Obama’s unlawful HHS mandate, the Department of Justice has resorted to the extraordinary claim that the owner of property has no religious-liberty rights in his use or control of property if the property is a corporation engaged in a “secular” business . . . Never mind that even the Ninth Circuit (see slip op. at 8453-8454 & n. 9) has recognized that the owners of a corporation engaged in business activity have free-exercise rights in carrying out their business. (See generally ADF Reply at 3-6.)*

PublicEye.org (authored by Kapya John Kaoma and published by Political Research Associates): Conference panelists varied from a new brand of less vitriolic pro-traditional family advocates such as Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at University of Virginia, to Piero Tozzi, an attorney for the right-wing Christian group the Alliance Defense Fund, to Floyd Godfrey, a practitioner of the harmful and discredited practice of reparative or conversion therapy for “treating” same-sex attraction . . . The ACLJ is now one of the principal legal advocacy groups in the conservative movement, along with the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Counsel, the Liberty Institute, and the Thomas More Law Center.
The group has built strong partnerships with many Religious Right groups, including the Christian Defense Coalition, Faith and Action,
the American Family Association, and WallBuilders. Its reach has expanded globally with affiliates in countries including France, Israel, , Kenya, Pakistan, Russia, Zimbabwe, and Brazil.

TownTalk: The college filed a federal lawsuit Feb. 18 because the religious conviction of the school is in direct conflict with the mandate, said J. Michael Johnson, dean of LC’s planned law school. Johnson is representing the school in the lawsuit as part of the Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian ministry founded in 1994 that advocates a religious agenda for coordinates related legal strategy. The lawsuit, Louisiana College v. Sebelius . . .

National Review: America is a country founded on freedom, not on a presumption of government coercion,” Matthew Bowman, the Newlands’ lawyer from the Alliance Defending Freedom tells me. “Religious freedom in America has always included the way people exercise their beliefs Monday through Friday, not just on Sundays and in soup kitchens. If the government succeeds in destroying religious freedom for family businesses, they won’t be able to allow Jesus Christ to reign over their entire lives.” It’s the freedom to be authentically Christian.

National Review: HVAC and the HHS Mandate: Catholic business owners fight for their religious liberty.

The Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance covering abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception goes into effect on August 1. Matt Bowman, a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, talks to National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the Newland family in Denver, whose religious liberty he is helping to defend. The Newlands run a company, Hercules Industries, that distributes products for heating and air-conditioning systems. They are asking for an injunction that will protect their constitutional rights as they face the beginning of their new health-care-enrollment year this fall.

Politico Pro (subscription): A Colorado judge is expected to rule Friday on a request from a small business owner to block the Obama administration’s requirement that employers provide insurance coverage of contraceptives . . . He said he would rule on Friday, according to Matt Bowman, an Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer who represented Hercules in court.

The Patriot Post: This is just as if the Justice Department were to tell a family owned newspaper that it must publish editorials calling for a confiscatory estate tax, basing its coercion of the newspaper on the supposition (which lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom argue DOJ is by analogy making) that as a for-profit secular and incorporated employer, the paper has no First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Michael J. Norton and Sue Thayer on Koinonia with Tom Brown to discuss Thayer v. Planned Parenthood. | MP3 audio 13 mins

Jennifer A. Marshall at the Miami Herald (7/18): Take the Newland family of Denver, who own and operate an HVAC company called Hercules Industries. They happen to be practicing Catholics. A suit on their behalf was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, or ADF), seeking a preliminary injunction by Aug. 1 so that the family isn’t forced to violate their religious beliefs as they plan for a new year of health coverage.

LifeNews: Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Matt Bowman will be presenting his oral argument in federal court tomorrow on behalf of a Colorado family business suing the Obama administration over its abortion pill mandate . . . “Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith,” said Bowman. “ObamaCare demands that Americans choose between two poison pills: either desert your faith by complying, or resist and be punished. Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out. Under the Constitution, the government is charged with safeguarding our freedom, not snuffing out the very freedom it is sworn to protect.”

NC Register: However, that line of thinking threatens religious freedom by trying to separate the right to worship from the right to order one’s life according to one’s conscience and religious convictions, said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of Christian attorneys representing the Newland family. Alliance Defending Freedom was formerly called the Alliance Defense Fund.
“We think, under the law, the federal government is not allowed to force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living, that religious freedom in the First Amendment, as Congress has protected it, is not just for Sundays and soup kitchens. It’s for you to live your daily life, including in business, according to your faith,” Bowman told the Register. In Newland v. Sebelius . . .

Casey Mattox at The American Thinker: Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently incited the outrage of The Washington Post, actor Ed Helms, and at least five other celebrities by supporting marriage on the Ken Coleman radio program. In a discussion about ongoing attempts to redefine marriage in this country, Cathy said . . .

David J. Hacker at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Four current and former Alliance Defending Freedom clients were named to Red Alert’s “30 Under 30” list this week: Orit Sklar, Ruth Malhotra, Justin Pulliam, and Lila Rose. The list honors the thirty most inspiring young conservatives in the country and seeks to inspire other young conservatives by showing how much can be done “with hard work and a can-do attitude.”

LifeNews: The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) along with other pro-life organizations filed an extensive report to the CEDAW Committee focusing on the false correlations between liberalized abortion laws and maternal mortality. That report was outnumbered by reports filed by pro-abortion advocates . . . [more]

Erik Stanley on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the situation. | MP3 audio 14:35 mins

Michael Norton appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss the suit. | MP3 audio 13:42 mins

LifeNews: Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom Steven Aden added: “The precious tax dollars of the people of Arizona should not be funneled to abortionists, especially during tough economic times. The members of the Arizona Legislature have worded a bill that allows them to be good stewards of the people’s money in this regard. It’s no surprise that Planned Parenthood would oppose that in light of their ongoing thirst for taxpayer dollars.”

Christian Post: The university is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not a place where free speech is a punishable offense,” said Legal Counsel David Hacker of Alliance Defending Freedom. A letter from ADF to the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District prompted the withdrawal of the hearing for the Grossmont College student, according to the legal ministry. “We commend Grossmont College for dropping the unjustified disciplinary hearing against our client, but as the Constitution requires, the college still needs to take prompt action and change its vague distribution policy to prevent any future discrimination against faith-based groups and activities. We’ll be monitoring the situation to ensure that the necessary changes are made,” Hacker stated Wednesday.

Baptist Press: “If the government continues to say that we have to do this, we will not do it,” Louisiana College President Joe Aguillard told Fox News. “There’s going to be, in my opinion, a constitutional crisis. We’re not going to do it.” . . . “People of faith shouldn’t be punished by the government for following their beliefs when making decisions for themselves or their organizations,” said Kevin Theriot, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF is representing Louisiana College in its lawsuit.

C-FAM: The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) along with other pro-life organizations filed an extensive report to the CEDAW Committee focusing on the false correlations between liberalized abortion laws and maternal mortality. That report was outnumbered by reports filed by pro-abortion advocates.

Steve Aden appears just after the 9 minute mark on World Magazine Radio July 14th edition.

Michael J. Norton appeared on KFYL with Jay Rudolph to discuss this: Alliance Defending Freedom represents former manager of two Iowa clinics in fraud lawsuit against abortion giant. | MP3 audio 2:43 mins