Tag Archives: Topic: Conscience

The New American: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative legal advocacy group, announced that it had filed suit against several federal officials and departments, including Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her Department of Health and Human Services, on behalf of Grote Industries, an Indiana-based auto industry lighting manufacturer. “Americans should be free to honor God at work, at home, and at church,” said Indianapolis attorney Mike Wilkins, who is working with ADF to represent the firm against the federal government. “They have the God-given freedom to live and do business according to their faith. Forcing them to surrender their faith in order to earn a living is unprecedented, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. The Administration’s attacks on faith and business prove that it doesn’t respect either one.” . . . “The government has no business deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and when and where their faith may be lived out,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “Washington politicians can’t confine our faith to our homes and our churches. Honoring God is important every day, in all areas of life, including in our work. Freedom is God-given, not government-driven.”

Nathan Cherry at Engage Family Minute: A recent Alliance Defending Freedom article states: “An Indiana-based vehicle lighting manufacturer is the latest company to challenge the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate in court. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and allied attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of Grote Industries against the mandate…’Americans should be free to honor God at work, at home, and at church. They have the God-given freedom to live and do business according to their faith. Forcing them to surrender their faith in order to earn a living is unprecedented, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. The administration’s attacks on faith and business prove that it doesn’t respect either one.’”

National Review: In response, Barack Obama’s Department of Justice argues, that religious-liberty rights to not extend to the Greens as businessmen. Recall that this is an administration whose posture toward religious liberty was slapped down unanimously earlier this year in the Hosanna-Tabor case involving a Lutheran religious school. And yet the administration continues to work to erode religious liberty.

Christian Newswire: John Kennedy, president and chief executive officer of Autocam and Autocam Medical, will be the featured speaker in a live, web-based conference Friday, Nov. 2, from 9-10 a.m. Eastern, in which he will discuss his lawsuit against the federal government over the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The business executive, a Roman Catholic, says his religious beliefs prevent him from complying with the abortion-related mandates of the new federal plan.

McClatchyDC: In the letter, Jenky cautions parishioners that Obama and a majority of U.S. senators will not reconsider the mandate that would require employers, including religious groups, to provide free birth control coverage in their health care plans. “This assault upon our religious freedom is simply without precedent in the American political and legal system,” Jenky wrote. “Today, Catholic politicians, bureaucrats, and their electoral supporters who callously enable the destruction of innocent human life in the womb also thereby reject Jesus as their Lord,” Jenky added. “They are objectively guilty of grave sin.”

LifeNews: The Obama administration told a federal court today that the Christian business Hobby Lobby must obey the HHS mandate that forces religious companies to pay for drugs for women that may cause abortions.

Americans for Tax Reform: Our projected IRS form assists 140 million Americans in their obligation to disclose personal identifying health information and calculate the IRS tax penalty.

Wesley J. Smith at National Review: A just released European Court of Human Rights ruling appears to require Poland to squash the conscience rights of doctors who do not wish to be complicit in a legal abortion.

The Catholic Transcript: Taking the Obama Administration to task for what he considers its assault on the values and freedoms of Americans, Alan Sears, one of the leading legal advocates for religious liberty, urged an audience attending a bioethics lecture to “take a stand” for issues that preserve life and freedom. “This administration is waging a war on everything our Founding Fathers held dear, trying to destroy the heart of America, its rich heritage of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” said Mr. Sears, president, CEO and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an organization that works to defend religious liberty, marriage and human life. “This administration has turned the purpose of government on its head,” he continued. “No longer is its purpose to protect and defend our religious liberty. Rather, it is now becoming a tyrannical tool used to undermine our freedoms and eradicate our conscience.” Mr. Sears made his comments at the annual Pope John Paul II Bioethics Lecture on Oct. 5 at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. [more and photo]

Heritage Foundation: As Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for ADF who will be arguing at the hearing tonight, explained:Americans have the God-given freedom to live and do business according to their faith. The government shouldn’t punish people of faith for making decisions in accordance with it, and yet that’s what the Obama administration is trying to do here in Pennsylvania and throughout the country.

LifeNews: Another plaintiff has won a court ruling against the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate. Federal District Court Judge Robert H. Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan issued an opinion yesterday evening granting a motion for Preliminary Injunction that effectively halts enforcement of the HHS mandate against Plaintiffs Weingartz Supply Company and its owner and president, Daniel Weingartz. | Ruling: Legatus v. Sebelius | Thomas More Law Center press release

AP: The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City is scheduled to hear the company’s arguments in favor of an injunction Thursday. The government says Hobby Lobby is a secular employer that by definition does not exercise religion.

Liberty Counsel: The U.S. Department of Justice has informed the Supreme Court that it does not oppose Liberty University’s Petition for Rehearing the Court’s denial of review of the case of Liberty University v. Geithner. Liberty Counsel, representing Liberty University and two private individuals, asked the Court to grant its Petition for review, vacate the ruling of the Court of Appeals, and remand (send back) the case for the Court of Appeals to consider the outstanding and unresolved claims, including the constitutionality of the employer mandate and the Free Exercise claim.

Anthony Esolen at Public Discourse: The Anti-Federalists’ early fear about Congress’s taxing power—that it would result in a tax on humans’ very existence—are now realized in the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare.

Citizen Link: The government has no business deciding what faith is, who the faithful are and when and where those people can live out their faith, said Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “Washington politicians can’t confine our faith to our homes and churches,” Bowman said. “Honoring God is important every day, in all areas of life, including our work. Freedom is God-given, not government-driven.” The complaint states the family “seeks to run Grote Industries in a manner that reflects their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Breitbart: Notice that the administration goes beyond its argument that businesses have no religious freedom rights. The DOJ says that even if a business did have rights to religious freedom, the HHS mandate is not really a “substantial” ethical dilemma, and, in a sense, the government can decide what is a “substantial burden” and what is not.

Religion Clause Blog: The complaint (full text) in Grote Industries, LLC v. Sebelius, (SD IN, filed 10/29/2012), alleges 1st and 14th Amendment, RFRA and Administrative Procedure Act violations. Alliance Defending Freedom issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.

One News Now: “The government has no business deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, or where and when their faith can be practiced,” contends ADF attorney Matt Bowman. “Washington politicians can’t confine faith to our homes and our churches. Honoring God is important every day in all areas of life, including in our business. Freedom is God-given, not government-driven.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman will be available for media interviews following a hearing Wednesday in which he will argue against the Obama administration’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit against the president’s abortion pill mandate.

An Indiana-based vehicle lighting manufacturer is the latest company to challenge the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate in court.

Matt Bowman at Townhall: The president’s agencies have written rules that render evangelistic publishing of the Bible to be, well, not really religious. To the people who drafted the ObamaCare rule, and its defenders, religion is little more than a target of derision and marginalization.

ENIDNews.com: A new poll shows a new mandate in the Affordable Care Act, or the so-called “Obamacare,” is not popular in the state. SoonerPoll.com’s survey of 305 likely voting Oklahomans found 57% opposed the new mandate and 33% supported it, with 10% undecided.

LifeNews: “Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” said Bowman. “For the government to say that a Bible publisher is not religious is alarming. It demonstrates how clearly the Obama administration is willing to disregard the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom to achieve certain political purposes. For that reason, we are asking the court to halt this mandate.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman will be available for media interviews following his oral argument Monday asking for a court order to stop enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher.

The Hill: Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee threatened to issue subpoenas if the IRS doesn’t turn over more records about how it’s implementing the law’s insurance subsidies. Republicans believe the IRS is planning to hand out billions of dollars in subsidies that aren’t authorized by the healthcare law.

AP: The U.S. government is urging a federal judge to deny a Hobby Lobby Stores request to block the enforcement of a new health care law that requires employers to give staff insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar drugs.

Erik Scheidler at the Washington Times: Despite 10 months of controversy — including a public clash between the White House and the U.S. Catholic bishops, countless rallies and protests across the country and the filing of dozens of federal lawsuits — many liberals and independents remain puzzled by the fight over the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. They don’t understand how conservatives can insist that the HHS mandate constitutes an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.

LifeSiteNews: Thousands of Americans in dozens of cities took a stand against the Obama administration’s HHS birth control mandate on Saturday. Marching at noon local time, people in 145 cities protested the mandate as part of the nationwide Stand Up for Religious Freedom movement.

Colorado Statesman: Former U.S. attorney Norton called Obama’s health care law the “greatest threat to religious freedom of our time,” citing a provision in the law that birth control be made available to women at no out-of-pocket cost. He said it is not a contraception mandate, but an “abortion pill” requirement. “They must think we’re stupid,” said Norton, who is the husband of former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton. “Who is paying for this coverage? It’s you and me. It doesn’t really matter whether the employer pays it or the insurance companies pay for it…” “What right does the government have to run roughshod over the conscience and religious convictions of every American, including business owners?” he continued. “And what right does the government have to decide what is faith and who are the faithful?”

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday, yet another federal lawsuit was filed challenging on RFRA, 1st Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act grounds the contraception coverage mandate under the Affordable Care Act.  The complaint (full text) in Griesedieck v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (WD MO, filed 10/19/2012) . . . American Center for Law and Justice issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.

Mark Taylor of Tyndale Publishing and Matt Bowman with Chris Fabry on the Moody Radio Network to discuss the Tyndale House Publishing suit versus the Obamacare mandate. | MP3 audio 37:28 mins

World Magazine audio and report on Oct. 20th, Hour 3, Segment B.

Lexington Herald-Leader: The Obama administration has “seized the power to define what faith is, who the faithful are, and when, how and where we get to practice our faith,” said Bryan Beauman, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, a socially conservative legal consortium.

Alan Sears at Holy Apostles College: Seriously, I am truly honored to be here tonight, honored to address in the name of the Blessed John Paul the II – you, my fellow followers of Christ in this age of much uncertainty, about some of the defining issues of our time: the sanctity of life, bioethical issues, marriage, and the
struggle to preserve freedom of conscience and religious liberty.The 19th century Russian writer, Fyoder Dostoevsky once wisely said: “If God is dead all things are permitted.” My friends, we live in age — particularly right now in history during a crucial election year – where a political and legal battle wages about the law and the meaning of life: what it is, when it begins, and what our responsibilities are to nurture and protect it — or to extinguish or prevent it.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review: I was waiting for the moment where Governor Romney would do the educating he’s done on the campaign trail at times; some of the undecideds in New York might benefit from knowing what is going on on the religious-freedom front here.

Naomi Schoenbaum at The Atlantic: Obamacare has been one of the yardsticks of Obama’s term in office and one of the touchstones of the 2012 election. Last night’s presidential debate was no exception, with health care reform mentioned at least half a dozen times. But an important piece of the discussion has been missing: is the health care law a tax or a penalty?

Matt Bowman appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss some of the whoppers being told about the HHS mandate. | MP3 audio 9:28 mins

William J. Haun at National Review Bench Memos: Professor Vincent Muñoz is one of this country’s foremost scholars on religious free exercise. His recent criticisms of the religious-liberty challenge to the HHS mandate at Public Discourse, though well-reasoned, underestimate the challenge’s merits. In so doing, Professor Muñoz prematurely closes the door to litigation that can better protect the free exercise of all Americans.

Matt Bowman appeared on the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio. An earlier report on the case appeared in National Review Online. | MP3 audio 10:26 mins

Baptist Press: Southern Baptist ethics and religious freedom specialist Richard Land joined three others in an Oct. 3 forum sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The panelists responded to the question: Are religious institutions and individuals being treated like second class citizens?

FORUM 18: A 19-year-old Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector to compulsory military service yesterday (15 October) lodged an appeal against his imprisonment, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Fakhraddin Mirzayev was given a one-year prison sentence on 25 September by a court in Azerbaijan’s second city Gyanja [Gäncä]. “This is the first criminal prosecution of a Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector in Azerbaijan since Farid Mammedov was imprisoned in September 2010,” Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18. “Others have been investigated, but their cases were never referred to court.”

Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally: The next Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally is only five days away, and today our list of cities has topped 140!

Jonathan Adler at National Review: During oral arguments in the Supreme Court challenge to the individual mandate, NFIB v. Sebelius, the plaintiff’s lawyer Paul Clement warned the justices not to make the same mistake they made in the 1970s with Buckley v. Valeo. In Buckley, the Court upheld portions of the post-Watergate campaign-finance reforms while invalidating others. The result was a muddled statute that Congress and the courts would repeatedly revisit for years to come. Repeating this approach with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Clement cautioned, could produce similar undesirable results. It’s too soon to know how quickly Congress will revisit the PPACA, but Clement’s warning already seems to be coming true in the courts.

Adam J. MacLeod at Public Discourse: Two incompatible conceptions of rights are at stake in the debate over the HHS mandate.

Baptist Press: The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed Oct. 12 that asked a federal appeals court to reverse the dismissal of two lawsuits against the controversial requirement under the 2010 health care law. The brief supports challenges by Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, and Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Carolina, to the mandate that employers provide workers with health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs.

LifeSiteNews: He singled out President Obama and Secretary Sebelius only in the context of the absurdity of how the mandate defines a religious institution: “Our institutions,” Chaput said, “would be considered religious if we served only Catholics—now that wouldn’t be very Catholic, would it?”

USCCB: Last night, the following statement was made during the Vice Presidential debate regarding the decision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to force virtually all employers to include sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion, in the health insurance coverage they provide their employees: “With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.” This is not a fact.

CNSNews: In the face of a statement that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued Friday saying that Vice President Joe Biden had spoken falsely when he said no Catholic institution would be required under an Obamacare regulation to “refer,” “pay for” or “be a vehicle” for someone to get contraception, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign said it is standing by what Biden said.

LifeNews: The amicus brief was authored and filed Friday by attorneys of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has worked closely with Catholic and other Christian colleges in defense of their constitutional rights. “Belmont Abbey is not alone. Every faithful Catholic college is already suffering the damage caused by this ruinous mandate, which demands that they violate their deeply held Catholic beliefs,” said Bob Laird, Director of Programs for The Cardinal Newman Society. “Additionally, Christian colleges, businesses, and other employers who fear the loss of their religious freedom are similarly affected by the mandate. This amicus brief represents a united front in opposition to the Obama administration’s outrageous violation of religious freedom.” Catholic colleges signing ADF the amicus brief are . . .

CBN (includes video): They just don’t want to have to provide abortion pills and other items in this plan that violate their faith,” Matt Bowman, with Alliance Defending Freedom, said.

liance Defending Freedom attorneys who are litigating numerous lawsuits against the Obama administration’s abortion pill and contraceptive mandate are calling Vice President Joe Biden’s claims that effectively denied the mandate’s existence in Thursday’s vice-presidential debate “amazingly false.”

Religion Clause Blog: The complaint (full text) in Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta v. Sebelius, (ND GA, filed 10/5/2012) alleges that the mandate violates the 1st Amendment, RFRA, the Administrative Procedure Act and amounts to an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.

Vincent Phillip Munoz at Public Discourse: In yesterday’s article I presented two costs of religious liberty litigation against the HHS mandate–the probability that not all religious objectors to the mandate will be exempted from it even if its current legal challengers win their cases, and the overreach of judicial authority that these lawsuits involve. Today I will discuss how litigation tends to undermine the strongest arguments against the HHS mandate, which appeal to the reason of all Americans, religious or non-religious. I’ll conclude by explaining how the potential costs of religious liberty litigation could be avoided by refocusing the debate on those arguments.

Queerty (site promotes homosexual behavior and may contain objectionable content): Inspired by a law recently enacted in California, Pennsylvania State Representative Babette Josephs (D- 182nd) has introduced a bill that would ban the practice of reparative or “conversion” therapy in the state of Pennsylvania.

Mathew J. Franck at Imprimis: HERE IS A GROWING awareness among Americans that religious freedom in our country has come under sustained pressures. In the public square where freedom of religion meets public policy, it becomes clearer all the time that there is a high price to be paid for being true to one’s conscience. This is no tale of Chicken Little—although a chain of chicken sandwich restaurants based in Atlanta is part of the story. Let me give you a few examples.

Weekly Standard (video embedded): A GOP source sends along this video, shot by a Republican tracker, of a union member supporting Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren outside of a debate Wednesday night in Springfield, Massachusetts. The cameraman asks the union member if he was at an earlier debate between Warren and her Republican opponent, Senator Scott Brown

Matt Bowman appeared on the Georgene Rice Show to discuss the Tyndale Publishing litigation. | MP3 audio 9:04 mins

NRB: “Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” added ADF Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “To say that a Bible publisher is not religious is simply absurd.”

Public Discourse: Current lawsuits against the HHS contraceptive mandate may undermine religious liberty in the long run. Not all religious objectors to the mandate are likely to be exempted even if the lawsuits are successful, and judges violate the core meaning of religious liberty when they assess plaintiffs’ religious character. The first in a two-part series.

Religion Clause Blog (links to press release and complaint): New suits continue to be filed challenging the mandate under the Affordable Care Act requiring that most insurance policies cover contraceptive services. The latest is Korte v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (SD IL, filed 10/9/2012) (full text of complaint . . .

Baptist Press: Underscoring once again it’s not a Catholic-only issue, two Baptist colleges have filed suit against the Obama administration’s abortion/contraceptive mandate, saying they’re standing up for what Baptists long have defended — religious freedom.

LifeSiteNews: As Congress probes expensive public relations contracts to market the unpopular ObamaCare law to the American public, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced that it has inked a deal worth more than $3 million to promote ObamaCare’s “exchanges.”

Matt Bowman apppeared on Relevant Radio, A Closer Look with Sheila Liaugminas to discuss the HHS Mandate and the Tyndale Publishing Suit. | MP3 audio 24:05 mins

Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe: The German law requires pharmacists to provide prescribed medications within due time (§ 31 Abs. 1 Satz 1 and § 17 Abs. 4 SGB V). There is no exception for ethically ambiguous drugs, such as the early abortifacient morning-after-pill. If a pharmacy fails to deliver, its concession may be withdrawn (§§ 1 Abs. 2, 2 and 4 ApoG).

Wilson, Robin Fretwell, The Calculus of Accommodation: Contraception, Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage, and Other Clashes Between Religion and the State (October 2, 2012). Boston College Law Review, Vol. 53, p. 1417, 2012; Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2012-31. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2155867

Stanley W. Carlson-Thies, Which Religious Organizations Count as Religious? The Religious Employer Exemption of the Health Insurance Law’s Contraceptives Mandate, Engage Volume 13, Issue 2, July 2012.

Thomas More Society: Autocam Corporation, the lead supplier of fuel injection parts to Bosch, Delphi, Conti, and Hitachi, has joined the growing number of businesses suing the government over religious freedom violations. The lawsuit, filed on October 8 by the Thomas More Society on behalf of the privately held manufacturer of precision automotive and health components and its owners, is a direct response to the Obamacare Health & Human Services (HHS) mandate requirement that they provide group insurance coverage of abortions, sterilization, and birth control for their employees.

National Review: Referencing the Department of Health and Human Services abortion-drug, contraception, sterilization mandate, the president said: “I don’t think a college student in Fairfax or Charlottesville should have to choose between text books or the preventive care that she needs. That’s why we passed this law. And I am proud of it. It was the right thing to do. And we are going to keep it.”

Matt Bowman appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the Tyndale Publishing challenge to the Obamacare mandate. | MP3 audio 11:19 mins

LifeNews: Today, East Texas Baptist University (ETBU) and Houston Baptist University (HBU) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, asking the court for relief from the Department of Health and Human Services’ “preventative services” mandate, which forces the Christian Universities to violate their deeply held religious beliefs or pay severe fines. “Baptists in America, by virtue of their history, are particularly sensitive to coercive government actions that infringe on religious liberty,” says Eric Rassbach, Deputy General Counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which filed suit this morning on behalf of the two universities.

A federal court has scheduled an Oct. 16 hearing to consider whether to halt enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher. The court scheduled the hearing in response to a preliminary injunction motion that Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House Publishers filed Monday.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review: “The law does not give any religious-freedom exemption to faith-based operations like Tyndale,” Taylor, who is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, points out. “Instead, it imposes crushing fines on employers who are doing nothing more than following their consciences against abortion-inducing pills. The government is supposed to promote conscience protection, not attack it. The best solution is for Congress or the administration to respect the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by eliminating the abortion-pill mandate. But if they refuse to do their duty, we hope the courts will rule that the mandate is unlawful.”

The Citizen Link Audio report is here.

Matt Bowman on the Bob Dutko Show to discuss the suit. | MP3 audio 6:18 mins

Kinder v. Geitner, No. 11-1973

A group of seven plaintiffs, including Samantha Hill and Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (acting in his personal capacity), brought this action to challenge various provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“the Act”). Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010). The district court dismissed the suit for lack of standing. Hill and Kinder appeal, and we affirm.