ACLJ Asks Court to Block HHS Mandate

By 

Geoffrey Surtees

|
August 23, 2012

3 min read

ObamaCare

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Today, as reported here, we asked the federal court in St. Louis, Missouri to block enforcement of the HHS Mandate against our clients, Frank O’Brien and O’Brien Industrial Holdings (“OIH”), until the court issues a final ruling on our legal claims. If the court grants our motion, this will be a significant step forward in preserving the rights of our clients to follow their religious beliefs and principles free from interference by the federal government.

The basis of our motion is clear and straightforward. The HHS Mandate, which requires employers to include abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization in employee health plans, substantially burdens the religious exercise of Frank O’Brien and OIH in violation of federal law and the First Amendment.

While 9 out of 10 employers already include such drugs and services in their health plans, many employers, like Frank O’Brien, cannot do so consistent with their religious conscience. They believe they should have the right to fashion their employee health plans according to the dictates of their religious beliefs.

Until the HHS Mandate went into the effect just over three weeks ago, they had that right. Now, under the Mandate, the federal government is trying to take that right away.

As we argue in the motion, the federal government, by way of the Mandate, is placing our clients, and other religious employers like them, in an impossible situation. They can either (1) not comply with the Mandate, pursuant to their religious beliefs, and thereby incur severe penalties, or (2) abandon their beliefs as part of the cost of doing business. This is a choice the government cannot, consistent with the Constitution, impose on Frank O’Brien or anyone else.

As the legal challenges to the HHS Mandate move forward, it is critical to keep in mind what these cases are and are not about. They are not about, as the administration and Planned Parenthood would have us believe, denying anyone access to contraceptives. No plaintiff in any case challenging the Mandate is trying to limit the availability of such drugs and services.

What these cases do concern is something else entirely, and something far more important: the right to act according to one’s religious beliefs and conscience, free from coercion or penalty.

Does this mean one’s religious beliefs should be permitted to trump any and all laws? Of course not. In this case, however, where the government can pay for and provide these drugs and services itself, without conscripting objecting religious employers into doing so, the government has overstepped the line. It has crushed the liberty of conscience.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, wrote in 1792 that conscience “is the most sacred of all property.” Madison, like the other Founders, well understood that once the government is given ground to coerce conscience, then all other individual rights mean precious little. That is why the challenge to the HHS Mandate is so critical. That is why we must win.

We will keep you posted on the preliminary injunction motion filed today.