WASHINGTON — A federal court on Friday ruled that the health care law's mandate that employers provide free coverage for contraception infringed on individual religious liberty.
The case, Gilardi v. the Department of Health and Human Services, was the latest setback for the Obama administration as it struggles to fix the crippled insurance enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. However, the fight over the mandate long preceded the law's enactment and will most likely go to the Supreme Court.
The mandate "trammels the right of free exercise," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote for a divided three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ruling was largely in line with most others around the country so far. Of nearly 40 challenges, only a handful of courts have upheld the government's requirement that employer health plans provide free birth control, emergency contraception and sterilization.
Francis A. Gilardi Jr. and Philip M. Gilardi, brothers from Sidney, Ohio, should not have to provide contraception coverage to employees of the companies they own if it goes against their Catholic faith, the court ruled. However, those companies themselves, Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, do not have the right to challenge the mandate on religious grounds, the court said.
As a result, the ruling was only a "partial victory" for mandate opponents, according to a statement from the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented the Gilardis. The organization said it planned to ask the Supreme Court to settle the question.
"While this is a victory for the individual plaintiffs," said Francis J. Manion, who argued the case, "the appeals court rejected a critical argument that the rights of the companies be protected as well."
However, the question of companies' rights is just a "procedural technicality," said Eric Baxter, a senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented other high-profile challengers to the ban, including the craft store chain Hobby Lobby. The Supreme Court is expected to decide before Thanksgiving whether to review that or other cases about the mandate, Mr. Baxter said.
Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote a dissent to the main part of the ruling, calling the Gilardis' claim that a requirement on their companies imposed a burden on their freedom of religion "specious."
Judge Edwards continued, "It has been well understood since the founding of our nation that legislative restrictions may trump religious exercise."
The Department of Health and Human Services referred questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
The contraception mandate has been one of the most controversial aspects of the health law since the Obama administration first announced the mandate in mid-2011, along with other requirements it characterized as preventive care. Religious opponents of abortion have objected especially strongly to the requirement to provide emergency contraception pills, like Plan B, although most studies show that the drug works by preventing fertilization, not by inducing abortion.
In an effort to compromise, the administration has said that women who work for churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to birth control would receive separate coverage not paid for by the employers. It refused, however, to offer accommodations to secular businesses whose owners have religious objections to contraception.
On Monday, Luther Strange, Alabama's Republican attorney general, joined the Catholic broadcaster Eternal World Television Network as a plaintiff in its challenge against the mandate in United States District Court in the Southern District of Alabama.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Court Rules Contraception Mandate Infringes on Religious Freedom
Dengan url
https://healtybodyguard.blogspot.com/2013/11/court-rules-contraception-mandate.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Court Rules Contraception Mandate Infringes on Religious Freedom
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Court Rules Contraception Mandate Infringes on Religious Freedom
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar