contraception rule

By Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office, and Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. This piece is crossposted at the ACLU’s Washington Markup blog.

A federal court in Colorado recently put a temporary halt on the implementation of the Obama administration’s contraceptive coverage rule, with respect to one company. The contraceptive coverage rule requires insurance plans to cover contraception and stop routinely discriminating against women. The decision, if upheld, could pave the way for businesses to use their owners’ religion as an excuse to discriminate. 

Here’s what happened, in a nutshell: Hercules Industries is a manufacturer of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning products that employs 265 workers. It argued that the contraceptive coverage regulation violated the company’s religious liberty because its owners are opposed to the use of birth control. Two similar lawsuits have been filed by other businesses, one in Michigan and one in Missouri. 

Businesses exist to make money through commercial activity. By definition, their purpose is profit, not religious exercise. And for decades, the Supreme Court has recognized that entering into commercial activity means accepting that your faith cannot be imposed on those you employ. But Hercules Industries seeks to upend that common-sense rule. In its place, it proposes a theory that would let a business owner’s beliefs trump protections designed to safeguard workers – a radical break from our laws as we know them.

by Jeremy Leaming

Social conservatives, led, in part, by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, continuing to grumble about the Obama administration’s health care policy that requires health insurance companies to provide contraceptives to women, even those employed by companies with religious affiliations, are now looking to the federal courts to overturn the policy.

The Becket Fund, a Religious Right legal outfit, sued the administration in federal court earlier this week arguing that the policy, a part of the Affordable Care Act, violates the religious liberty rights of Ave Maria University in Florida. Ave Maria, a Catholic institution, states that it “pledges faithfulness to the teachings of the Church,” and is “known for its exceptional academics, faithfulness to the magisterium of the Catholic Church ….”

In a press statement announcing the lawsuit, Jim Towey, the university’s president, and former head of President George W. Bush’s faith-based office, claimed the “federal government has no right to coerce the University into funding contraceptives services that include abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization, in the health plan we offer our employees.”

Towey further declares that under the administration’s health care policy Ave Maria would be required to pay for contraceptives, and therefore is “prepared to discontinue our health plan and pay the $2,000 per employee, per year fine rather than comply with an unjust, immoral mandate in violation of our rights of conscience.”

In the same statement, the Becket Fund’s Kyle Duncan asserts that the health care policy forces the religious school to either betray its beliefs or dump employees’ health benefits.