Down With Discrimination: Broad Coalition Of 130 Organizations Asks President Obama To End Taxpayer-Funded Discrimination
President Barack Obama’s White House website stresses that he is a civil rights president who is “leading the fight to protect everyone – no matter who you are, where you’re from, what you look like, or who you love.” Yet, the president continues to enforce a policy that allows taxpayer-funded religious discrimination. This troubling policy allows faith-based organizations to take government funds to perform social services for the public and ignore laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of religion.
Exciting New Regulations: Yes, It’s True
The government has a longstanding practice of giving taxpayer money to faith-based organizations to provide social services. Last week, nine federal agencies proposed changes to the rules that currently govern those partnerships. These rule changes will implement several important religious liberty protections, including some that are aimed specifically at protecting our neighbors.
Texas AG Throws In Support With Religious Non-Profits Looking To Block Contraception Coverage
Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is in the news again, this time filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of East Texas Baptist University's never-ending quest to avoid providing contraception to its employees.
Appeals Court Rules Against Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York in Contraception Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled today that the Affordable Healthcare Act's contraception regulations and accommodations for religious non-profits do not adversely affect the rights of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Rockville Centre and others to practice their religion.
Birth Control Battles Continue
Bloomberg BNA’s Kimberly Robinson covers The Never-Ending Story: More Attacks on Obamacare’s ‘Contraceptive Mandate.’”
After discussing the ongoing legal challenges by nonprofit organizations to an accommodation that already relieves them of any obligation to include contraception in their health plans, Robinson points out that a federal appeals court recently reinstated a legal challenge by a Missouri state legislator who “claims the law forces him to provide his daughters with access to contraceptive methods that violate his religious beliefs, because his employer-provided health plan won’t allow him to opt out of contraceptive coverage.”
One Confusing Detail in Wheaton College's Student Insurance Cancellation Plan
Two weeks ago, we posted about Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college in Illinois, cancelling its student health insurance to avoid complying with the new ACA contraception accommodations. One new detail makes us wonder why Wheaton College caused so much fuss in the first place.
Forced Parenthood: Religious Right Groups Attack Pro-Choice Org With Aim Of Ending Abortion
Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines about Planned Parenthood.
Viral videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) purportedly show two PP doctors discussing the organization’s practice of “selling” fetal tissue to biomedical research firms. The Religious Right promptly whipped itself into a frenzy, claiming that the videos are evidence that the pro-choice non-profit is violating federal law. But that’s no surprise to us.
Court Reverses Decision in Washington Emergency Contraception Case
For the second time, The U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected a challenge to a Washington state law requiring pharmacies to stock and provide all prescription medicines, including emergency contraception such as the Plan B pill. A trial judge had ruled that the law was an unconstitutional violation of the plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion. The Ninth Circuit reversed, concluding that the Free Exercise Clause does not require exemptions for pharmacies with religious exemptions, because the law is not targeted at religion and advances the state’s interest in promoting patient safety.
Federal Appeals Court Correct To Reject Bogus ‘Religious Freedom’ Claims In Washington Birth Control Case, Says Americans United
Pharmacies Should Fill Prescriptions Regardless Of Owners’ Religious Views, Church-State Watchdog Asserts
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acted correctly today by upholding Washington state regulations that require pharmacies to fill prescriptions that their owners may find objectionable, Americans United for Separation of Church and State says.
Americans United filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the most recent version of the case, arguing that the regulations do not violate the religious freedom rights of pharmacy owners.
“The state of Washington has a clear interest in making sure women can get emergency contraception in a timely and safe manner,” said Alex J. Luchenitser, Americans United’s associate legal director. “A pharmacy owner’s personal religious beliefs shouldn’t be permitted to undermine that access.”
Washington pharmacy commissioners passed regulations in 2007 as a response to a spate of incidents involving pharmacists who refused to dispense birth control, emergency contraception and other medications. The same rules permit individual pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription as long as a colleague will do so instead.
Pharmacies, however, may not refuse to dispense the drugs entirely. The Stormans family, who owns Ralph’s Thriftway pharmacy in Olympia, claimed that provision violated its religious freedom rights and filed suit the same year. The family prevailed before a federal trial court in 2012, but the state appealed, arguing that it had a rational basis for requiring pharmacies to stock emergency contraception and other birth control pills.
The appeals court held that the regulations are neutral and don’t single out religion. The court also said the rules have a secular rationale of ensuring that state residents are able to get the medication they need.
“[T]he rules were rationally related to Washington’s legitimate interest in ensuring that its citizens have safe and timely access to their lawful and lawfully prescribed medications,” explained the court.
The case is Stormans, Inc. v. Wiesman. The Stormans family is being represented by the Becket Fund and the Alliance Defending Freedom, two Religious Right legal groups.
Americans United’s brief was prepared by Luchenitser and former AU attorney fellow Ben Hazelwood.
Faith Of The Fathers: Missouri State Sen. Attempts To Block Birth Control Coverage For His Daughters
A Missouri state representative who wants to stop his daughters from accessing birth control recently won a victory in his ongoing suit against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception regulations when the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to hear arguments in his challenge to the regulations, thus reversing a lower court ruling that threw the case out on standing.
Americans United, Allies Ask Federal Appeals Court To Protect Non-Profit Employees’ Access To Birth Control
Wheaton College Cancels Student Health Plan Due To Federal Contraception Requirements
Wheaton College, a Christian school of higher education in Illinois, is refusing to offer its student health plan this year after the Obama administration released new contraceptive accommodations for religious non-profits late last week.
'Hobby Lobby' Was Never About Religious Liberty
When the Obama administration's newly updated contraception accommodations came down late last week, anti-choice supporters showed their true colors.
New Birth Control Regulations Won’t Stem Religious Right Groups’ Attacks On Reproductive Health Care, Says Americans United
Far-Right Groups Are Determined To Curtail Access To Contraceptives, Church-State Watchdog Says
The Obama Administration today issued the latest in a series of regulations designed to ensure that Americans have access to affordable birth control, but the move isn’t likely to end litigation over the matter, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The new regulations accommodate religious objections advanced by certain closely held for-profit corporations; they also finalize previous accommodations made available to religious non-profit entities, such as religiously affiliated colleges and universities. The new rules go beyond what is required by court decisions, but that’s unlikely to placate bosses who are determined to curtail women’s access to birth control.
“I blame this mess on the Supreme Court,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Although these accommodations preserve women’s access to contraception, the definition of religious freedom adopted by the high court in the Hobby Lobby case has spawned new legal challenges that put American women at risk.”
The Hobby Lobby ruling, issued in 2014, permits certain for-profit businesses to refuse to include contraceptives in employee health-care plans if employers disagree with it on religious grounds. The case concerned a chain of craft stores whose fundamentalist owners insist, incorrectly, that certain types of birth control cause abortion.
“The administration had to respond to this ruling, and today’s regulations are a good-faith effort to protect women,” Lynn said. “Although I hope I’m proven wrong, I fear that the Religious Right and its allies, the Catholic bishops, won’t stop until they have denied access to safe and affordable birth control to as many women as possible.”
Lynn pointed out that the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby was based on a faulty interpretation of a 1993 federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In light of the manner in which the high court misconstrued that law, Lynn said it may be time to fix it and make clear that RFRA was never intended to allow harms to third parties.
“An employee’s decision to obtain and use birth control is a purely private matter,” Lynn said. “It in no way diminishes or even affects the religious freedom of her boss.”
Battling Barriers: Birth Control Access Helps Women, But Religious Right Groups Threaten To Get In The Way
Supreme Court Reject Hold on Ruling Over Contraceptive Access at Religious Non-Profit Organizations
Abortion And Birth Control May Be on Supreme Court Docket Next Term
From MSNBC:
"By October, the highest court...may also decide to take a sequel to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the 2013 case in which the court struck down a regulation requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives and ruled that closely held for-profit corporations can opt out of certain laws with which they have religious objections. Religious nonprofits say the Obama administration’s opt-out form itself violates their religious consciences, although without disagreement in the lower courts, there is arguably less urgency there."
University of Notre Dame Loses Battle Against Contraception Benefit
Troubled Consciences: Ga. Pharmacist Withholds Crucial Medicine From Miscarrying Woman
Georgia’s broad “conscience clauses” are under renewed scrutiny due to reports that a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for a drug some abortion opponents don’t like. According to Brittany Cartrett, a Walmart pharmacy blocked her prescription for Misoprostol. Cartrett needed the drug to manage a natural miscarriage, but it is also often prescribed to induce medical abortions.
“She [the pharmacist] looks at my name and she says oh, well…I couldn’t think of a valid reason why you would need this prescription,” Cartrett wrote in a post on her personal Facebook page. Although she and her physician confirmed that the drug had been prescribed for a miscarriage, not an induced abortion, the pharmacist reportedly would not relent and told her, “I don't feel like there is a reason why you would need it, so we refused to fill it.”