Is Obama Dodging Religious Freedom's Day in Court?
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to hear the Little Sisters of the Poor's religious freedom case against the intrusive accommodation to the Obamacare contraception mandate, a case the Department of Health and Human Services doesn't want the Court to take.
After the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down in September the legality of an HHS Affordable Care Act mandate accommodation that requires religious objectors to allow the government to pay health care providers to provide contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees as part of their health plans, HHS sent a brief to the Supreme Court on Sept. 30 urging the court to resolve the question of whether the accommodation violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Although HHS admits that the Supreme Court should settle the RFRA issue, as there are seven related cases currently pending before the court, the Becket Fund accused HHS of trying to "hand-pick" its own opponent for the case in a reply brief submitted to the court on Tuesday.
