The federal health care law's mandate that employer health plans cover birth control has sparked dozens of lawsuits by secular, for-profit companies and their owners seeking to be exempted on religious grounds from having to comply. At this point, a handful of federal appeals courts have ruled on the question, with a few correctly rejecting the specious religious liberty claims. The latest ruling, issued last week, goes the wrong way.
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Under the Affordable Care Act, companies with more than 50 workers that provide health insurance must comply with the contraception coverage rule or face fines of up to $100 a day for each employee. The rule is structured to respect the concerns of religious institutions as well as an employee's right not to be governed by the religious beliefs of her boss.
Writing for a split three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Janice Rogers Brown found that the mandate "trammels the right of free exercise" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Unlike a previous appellate ruling against the mandate, she declined to endorse the absurd notion that a secular corporation is an entity capable of engaging in religion and therefore qualified to challenge the law on grounds of religious infringement. Nevertheless, she concluded that the mandate placed a substantial burden on the religious beliefs of the other plaintiffs, the two brothers who owned the closely held fresh-food processing companies at the center of the case — in violation of the restoration act.
In a dissent, Judge Harry Edwards disputed the idea that allowing women to make their own independent decisions about using contraception interfered with the owners' religious freedom and warned that the court's ruling could be applied to justify company owners with other religious beliefs from refusing to cover preventive vaccines against diseases.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide by Thanksgiving whether it will take up the issue. Its duty is to resolve the conflicting opinions by firmly rejecting the dangerous view that private employers can use their religious belief to discriminate against women.
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