Government Seeks Authority to ‘Determine What Is Sin’
By Bob Unruh. 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.” (Read more from “Government Seeks Authority to ‘Determine What Is Sin'” HERE)
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Thomas More Law Center: The Supreme Court is NOT the Arbiter of Sacred Scripture
The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, yesterday, filed a friend of the court brief in the case of Zubik v. Burwell, in support of seven non-profit organizations including the Little Sisters of the Poor who claim they cannot comply with the Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate (“HHS Mandate”) because even the so called “accommodations” make them actively complicit in the sin of abortion. TMLC’s brief asserts that the Court is not the arbiter of sacred Scripture and, therefore, cannot determine whether or not an act constitutes a sin; it can only determine whether the government’s penalties for refusal to complete the sinful act are a substantial burden on religious liberty.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, portrays this case as a potential turning point in American legal history, stating, “The HHS Mandate is 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.”
The HHS Mandate requires religious non-profit organizations to participate in a government scheme to provide free contraceptives, including abortion causing drugs and devices (abortifacients), to their employees or face monumental fines that would result in closing the doors of most non-profit organizations that object to the HHS Mandate.
However, the HHS Mandate allows non-profit organizations like the Little Sisters to receive a so-called accommodation from directly providing free contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees. The accommodation requires the non-profit organizations to either (1) fill out a form as notice of their objection to contraceptives and abortifacients and provide that form to their insurers, which includes language instructing the insurers to provide free contraceptives and abortifacients to the women in the non-profits’ health plans, or (2) write and send a detailed letter to HHS with all of the information necessary to notify the non-profits’ insurers of their newfound obligation to provide free contraceptives and abortifacients to the women in the non-profits’ health plans.
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.
TMLC’s brief argues, supported by a long line of Supreme Court precedent, that neither the government nor the Supreme Court 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 is to supplant the Church and the Bible with the government, allowing the Supreme Court and the government to interpret tenants of faith. This slippery slope would subject all religious exercise to the whim of the government’s approval.
See excerpts of the brief HERE explaining that the government seeks authority to define sin and why that is constitutionally impermissible.
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