by Sarah Zylstra / Christianity Today Gleanings
This is only an excerpt of the story. Click here to read the full story online.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments today on whether the Little Sisters of the Poor will be required to offer birth control to employees on its health insurance plan.
The court took up the case after a string of decisions by lower appeals courts supporting the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate was broken. In September, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Dordt College in Iowa and Cornerstone University in Michigan could not be penalized for refusing to accept the mandate.
If the court splits in a 4–4 vote, as many are predicting after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, no national precedent would be set. The lower court decisions would stand, which means the Catholic nuns would lose their case.
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But University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock explained why, for the first time, he was siding with the government on a religious freedom case.
“[The plaintiff’s] real objection is to what their secular insurers are required to do,” he wrote for The Washington Post. “The religious objectors demand a right to control how the government regulates insurance companies.”
The religious groups’ reasons—that only they can identify a substantial burden on their exercise of religion and that the government needs to exempt the insurers of conscientious objectors along with churches and their auxiliaries—actually harm religious liberty, he argued.
Another unexpected voice in favor of the government: The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), with along with Laycock has worked for decades to “enact, implement and defend” RFRA legislation.
“It is unusual, to say the least, for us to file for the government in a free exercise case,”wrote BJC general counsel Holly Hollman in an op-ed for Religion News Service. “Religious liberty is often threatened by government indifference or oversight. As this case demonstrates, it can also be endangered by exaggerated claims and overreaching.”
“These religious employers make far-reaching arguments against the exemption designed for them,” she argued. “In doing so, they threaten to take religious freedom law down with it.”
The Supreme Court’s decision will be handed down in June.
