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Religious Liberty on Trial Before the Supreme Court

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Photo Credit: Patriot Post

Photo Credit: Patriot Post

The Affordable Care Act is the law that keeps on giving. Last time it was before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts validated the horror that is ObamaCare when he declared the individual mandate penalty to be a tax, and thus within the constitutional power of Congress to create. Tuesday, the Supremes heard another challenge to the law in the form of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius – both cases dealing with mandates and religious liberty.

Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts chain owned by evangelical Christians. With more than 13,000 employees, the company faces potential fines of almost $475 million a year if it fails to comply with ObamaCare’s demands. Conestoga Wood Specialties is a kitchen cabinet manufacturer owned by Mennonites, and, with almost 1,000 employees, it faces penalties of $35 million per year for failure to comply. The owners of both companies contend that complying with ObamaCare’s mandate that employer-provided health insurance cover contraceptives – even more specifically the mandate that coverage include abortifacients – would force them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. More than 300 plaintiffs in over 90 lawsuits have joined them in the fight.

The suit pits the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) against ObamaCare. Under RFRA, the government may not substantially burden the free exercise of religion unless it can show that the burden advances a compelling interest using the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. (This is the federal law that is mirrored in Arizona, the amendment of which was the subject of the kerfuffle there last month.)

The Obama administration argues that business owners from the corner dry cleaner to corporate giants like Exxon give up their constitutional right to exercise their religion when they establish a business. And in essence, leftists want the government to stay out of their bedroom, but they want taxpayers and employers to pay for what happens in it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Religious Liberty is America’s First Freedom

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photo credit: fibonacci blueHigh Court to Weigh Limits of Religious Liberty in O-Care Case

By Ben Goad.

President Obama’s signature healthcare law is headed back to the Supreme Court in a high-stakes case that could redefine the limits of religious freedom in the United States.

The high court on Tuesday will hear challenges to ObamaCare’s contentious “birth control mandate,” which requires companies to offer contraceptive services to workers as part of their insurance coverage.

If successful, the challenge could peel away a significant portion of the mandate, potentially affecting preventive health coverage for millions of women and striking a major blow to the law itself.

But the court’s ruling could also have far-reaching implications for religious liberty by allowing companies to claim First Amendment rights that the government says are reserved for individuals.

“It’s pretty huge,” said Laurie Sobel, a senior women’s policy analyst at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “It’s hard to overstate the possible implications.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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If the contraceptive mandate passes, it will ruin a core U.S. ideology

By Rick Warren.

Does our Constitution guarantee the freedom of religion, or does it merely allow a more limited freedom to worship? The difference is profound. Worship is an event. Religion is a way of life.

Specifically, does the First Amendment guarantee believers of all faiths the freedom to practice their ethics, educate their children and operate family businesses based on their religious beliefs, moral convictions and freedom of conscience? Do Americans have the freedom to place our beliefs and ethics at the center of our business practices — or must we ignore them when we form a company?

These questions will be brought before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The outcome of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby will affect every American because any religion allowed to be practiced only inside a house of worship, and not in the day-to-day business of life, is a worthless faith.

Since I wrote “The Purpose Driven Life” 12 years ago, I have received more than 500,000 letters and e-mails from people trying to live in ways they believe honor God. For millions of Americans, faith is something you live by. It colors every decision and action, both at home and at work. It is personal, but it is not private.

David and Barbara Green are one example of a purpose-driven family leading a purpose-driven business. From the time the Greens started Hobby Lobby in their garage, building picture frames with their sons, they committed themselves and their company to one simple purpose: “Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating our company in a manner consistent with biblical principles.”

Read more from this story HERE.

In Arizona, GOP Shows How Easily It Will Cave On Religious Liberty

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Photo Credit: The Federalist Arizona is populated largely by warty, crooked-fingered Christians who were waiting excitedly to eject LGBT people from their restaurants, flower shops, and laundromats until Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed SB 1062.

This is the only conclusion one can draw from the hysterical claims peddled by LGBT activists, business leaders, and several prominent Republicans about the infamous religious liberty bill. If the bill were to have been signed into law, we were led to believe that Arizona’s economic competitiveness and international reputation would have been disastrously diminished.

All of the explicit and implicit claims about the negative consequences of SB 1062 were founded in ignorance—in most cases willful, blameworthy ignorance.

Here’s what you need to know about religious liberty and LGBT rights in Arizona.

In 1990, the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith established that a “neutral law of general applicability” could impinge on religious practice without violating the First Amendment. Alarmed at this erosion of traditional religious liberty protections, Congress responded by passing nearly unanimously the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which applies the highest level of judicial scrutiny to laws which restrict religious practice.

Read more this story HERE.

Catholic Archbishop: Wake Up! Religious Liberty Under Attack in USA

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is calling on Americans to wake up and recognize that the Founding Fathers’ vision of religious freedom is now threatened by the federal government.

“The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over,” said the archbishop. “We need to wake up.”

Chaput, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, pointed to Obamacare’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation as one example. The regulation, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, requires almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to all women of reproductive age–even if the person or employer providing the insurance coverage and even if the female beneficiaries themselves do not want the coverage and believe it is morally wrong and violates their religious beliefs.

“[T]he HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” the archbishop wrote in a recent column posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The column is entitled, “Religious Freedom and the Need to Wake Up.”

Last year, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously approved a statement describing the HHS regulation as an “unjust and illegal mandate.” The unanimous bishops said the regulation not only violated the religious freedom of religious institutions but also the “personal civil rights” of individual Americans who will be forced to comply with it either as employers or employees.

Read more from this story HERE.

Wife of Christian Held in Iran Waits as Trial, Possible Death Sentence Looms

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As her husband’s trial and possible death sentence looms, the wife of an American Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran for evangelizing clings to hope and prays for a miracle.

Naghmeh Abedini has been told by attorneys for her husband, Saeed, to expect the worst at Monday’s trial, where the 32-year-old husband and father faces the capital charge of compromising national security. Supporters believe the charges are directly related to Abedini’s work nearly a decade ago starting a house church movement in Iran, and the judge he’ll face, Abbas Pir-Abassi, is infamous for sending defendants to the gallows.

“There is a lot going through my mind. I can never clear my head. I only sleep two hours a night,” Naghmeh Abedini told Foxnews.com by phone from her family’s home near Boise. “Unfortunately, he has been set up for failure and a harsh sentence because of his beliefs. His attorney says that the court has gathered a large amount of evidence against him.”

As the trial approaches, Nagmeh and her husband’s supporters are hoping international pressure will be felt inside the Iranian regime. Although the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, on Friday, a spokesman for the Obama administration called on Iran to free Abedini.

“We remain troubled by the case of U.S. citizen Saeed Abedini, who was arrested by Iranian officials more than three months ago on charges relating to his religious beliefs. We call upon Iranian authorities to release him immediately,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin Calls Out Obama’s UnConstitutional ‘Imperial Presidency,’ Says President’s ‘Arrogant as Hell’

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In this must-see video, Mark Levin rails against Obama:

I’m not into imperial presidents who act imperial and speak imperial and Obama forgets there’s a Constitution. Yes, he keeps telling us he won re-election, congratulations. But guess what, the Constitution wasn’t up for election. It’s not up for a plebiscite or referendum. He has to comply with it, too. He was sent back to Washington, but he’s got a strict list of rules that he has to follow as president.

So when he gets up there and starts saying, ‘If Congress doesn’t do this I’m going to do this unilaterally,’ it violates separation of powers a lot of the time.

And this a man who’s been pushing the edge of the envelope as far as I’m concerned, whether it’s the appointment clause, whether it’s his unilateral on immigration, whether it’s his trashing the commerce clause and tax clause under ObamaCare. Now they’re talking about executive orders on the Second Amendment. They’ve issued regulations on the First Amendment attacking religious liberty. This notion that he might be able to lift the debt ceiling, you know, unilaterally under the 14th amendment.

SCOTUS Opens Door to New Obamacare Challenge

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photo credit: onecle

It feels a bit like deja vu all over again. The Supreme Court has ordered an appeals court to reopen arguments on the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate and contraceptive coverage provisions, opening a potential path back to the highest court by late 2013.

The case at hand is one filed Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia. The university had filed one of the earlier suits against the health care law, which was among the dozens dismissed by the Supreme Court when it ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to be constitutional.

The Liberty University case also is unique in that it was the only one where the appeals court decided it couldn’t even make a ruling, given that the provisions it was supposed to rule on hadn’t come into effect. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act precluded any rulings about the mandate’s constitutionality before the mandate actually took effect and individuals began paying penalties.

The Supreme Court sided against that viewpoint. In its decision, the justices said that it was within the court’s power to rule on the health law now. That leaves Liberty wanting some answers on the provisions it challenged in court. The Obama administration also agreed that these issues should go back to the Fourth Circuit. Other courts are already hearing new challenges to the health care law, too.

Liberty University doesn’t want to challenge the individual mandate; we already know what the Supreme Court thinks about that. But it does want are answers on two other provisions that it challenged: the mandate that employers provide insurance coverage and the requirement that contraceptives be covered. ”Petitioners’ remaining claims should be subject to adjudication by the lower courts,” Liberty University’s lawyers wrote in a July 2012 petition for re-hearing.

Read more from this story HERE.