By Bob Allen / Baptist News Global
This is an abbreviated version of the story. For the full story, click here.
Far-reaching arguments made by some religious nonprofits against an accommodation procedure can endanger religious liberty, according to a brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia School of Law.
In a document filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty disagreed with religious organizations including GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention suing the federal government over Obamacare.
The friend-of-the-court brief prepared Feb. 15 with University of Virginia professor and constitutional law expert Douglas Laycock argues that the government’s process for accommodating faith-based charities with moral objections to including contraception in their employee insurance plans provides adequate protection of religious liberty.
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As part of the coalition that worked 25 years ago for passage of the landmark Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the BJC says in the brief that “we are extremely reluctant to oppose a RFRA claim.”
“But religious liberty can be endangered by exaggerated claims and overreaching as well as by government intransigence and judicial under enforcement,” the brief states. It says various arguments in cases before the high court “endanger religious liberty, both legally and politically.”
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