Government seeks
'authority to determine what is sin', Legal team warns of ramifications of wrong decision at Supreme
Court, by Bob Unruh, 1/24/16, WND
In its Supreme Court
battle over Obamacare’s abortion-pill mandate, the government wants to
“determine what is in fact a sin,” contends a religious-rights legal group.
The high court has
agreed to hear the case of the Denver-based Little Sisters of the Poor nuns,
who refused to comply with the requirement that the insurance policies for
their employees cover abortion pills.
The nuns have refused to
sign over the responsibility to their insurance company, arguing it also would
be a violation of their faith to facilitate someone else committing a sin.
Now a friend-of-the-court
brief submitted by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of dozens of clients charges the
government is seeking to become the arbiter of religious beliefs.
The group’s chief
counsel, Richard Thompson, called the mandate “a monumental attack on religious
liberty.”
“If this appeal is lost,
the government becomes the head of every religious denomination in the country
by its assumed authority to determine what is in fact a sin,” he said.
The brief argues that
the neither the government nor the lawyers on the Supreme Court bench “can
determine whether an act does or does not violate a person’s religious
beliefs.”
“Rather, the Supreme
Court must accept the non-profits’ assertions that the notification requirement
is indeed against their religion.” To accept otherwise, the brief says, “is to
supplant the church and the Bible with the government, allowing the Supreme
Court and the government to interpret [tenets] of faith. “This slippery slope
would subject all religious exercise to the whim of the government’s approval.”
The brief points out
that it’s already been decided that the fines for noncompliance are a
substantial burden, leaving essentially the question of “whether compliance is
actually against the petitioners’ religion.” “This is something that is for
petitioners to determine, not the court,” the Thomas More Law Center says.
“The court is not the
arbiter of sacred Scripture and cannot determine whether the notification form
and letter are attenuated enough from the provision of contraceptives that they
do not substantially burden petitioners’ religion,” the brief says. “Delving
into this inquiry requires the court to interpret petitioners’ religious
beliefs on the morality of the different levels of complicity with sin.
“Therefore, the court
can only determine whether petitioners are being compelled to do something that
violates their faith – here, filling out the notification form or writing a
notification letter to HHS, both of which trigger the dissemination of
contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees in connection with their
employee health plans.”
The brief point out that
a woman’s right to get contraceptives is not unlimited. “This does not mean
they have a right to free contraceptives and abortifacients. Moreover, this
right certainly does not mean that a person has the right to obtain
contraceptives and abortifacients – either directly or indirectly – from their
employer at the expense of pillaging the employer’s religious liberty,” the
brief states.
The Little Sisters
charge the government is forcing them to violate their faith by giving them a
choice between providing contraceptives and abortion pills directly or ordering
them to sign over their responsibility to someone else.
“These notification
requirements trigger the non-profits’ insurers to provide free contraceptives
and abortifacients to the women in the non-profits’ health plans. This
notification requirement makes the non-profits complicit in the provision of a
service that they find sinful, thereby causing them to sin themselves,” the
brief explains.
The law center argues
there should not even be a case.
“The government already
subsidizes contraceptives and abortifacients through its programs and could
find ways to expand or increase the efficacy of those existing programs,” the
brief says.
“The government could
offer grants, go directly to insurers, or engage in countless other options
that do not involve the cooperation of petitioners.”
Further, providing “free
contraceptives and abortifacients” is not a compelling government interest, the
law center argues, quoting the Supreme Court itself.
“The many exemptions
already provided for under the regulations necessarily destroy any argument
that the HHS mandate serves a compelling interest.” It was the 10th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals that took on the authority of determining what is sin.
Another recent brief
challenged: “Perhaps the apex among a host of acts of governmental arrogance in
this case was displayed not by HHS, but when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
10th Circuit acted as if it had ecclesiastical powers of absolution, having
decreed that by just signing a paper, Little Sisters would not be ‘morally
complicit in providing contraceptive coverage.'”
The brief said one would
expect that “on the issue of who the God of Heaven and Earth will hold ‘morally
complicit,’ it would be the Little Sisters which would have the greater
expertise than a federal judge.”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/government-seeks-authority-to-determine-what-is-sin/
No comments:
Post a Comment