This will be the next front in the Obamacare war against liberty of conscience: “The next big Obamacare question of whether religious schools can duck the birth control mandate got another federal appeals court hearing on Tuesday.” The more or less short version: some religious institutions have strong objections to providing coverage for certain forms of birth control that are currently mandated by Obamacare. The Obama administration has created an alternative method to cover such things, in case of sincere religious objection by schools, religious institutions, and or other nonprofits: and the Obama administration obviously feels that this is sufficient.
The problem, of course, is that religious groups usually have religious reasons for rejecting any particular drug or procedure. They also usually have strong rules against aiding and abetting behaviors that the religious group consider sinful; and so they’re refusing to play along with the Obama administration. And, thanks to the Hobby Lobby case and the federal RFRA, religious groups’ arguments have a bit more bite to them.
Stories like these are kind of fascinating to me, largely because they demonstrate in full the full let’s-step-on-this-rake mentality that the Democrats have traditionally brought to implementing Obamacare. The above lawsuit involves two Baptist colleges from Texas, and it is only one of several making their way through the courts. There are others: Notre Dame, for example. The Supreme Court ruled that the Hobby Lobby case requires that a previous court decision to require the college to pay for birth control be vacated.
And then there’s the Little Sisters of the Poor case… and let’s just stop there, OK? When you are the government, you do not win court cases against charitable groups that have names like ‘Little Sisters of the Poor.’ Even when you do win court cases, you do not win those court cases. The results never work out the way that you’d like. If the administration had been more sensible about this then they would have come up with a good, plausible reason for making an exception and avoiding the PR hit. And there has been a PR hit over this. One of the reasons why Obamacare remains stubbornly unpopular is because most Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being the sort of people who would punch nuns.
And yet, here we are. And the Supreme Court is even now giving strong hints to the lower courts that they expect Burwell v. Hobby Lobby to be taken seriously. Which seriously leaves a person wondering why the Obama administration decided to just scream, and leap…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
It’s been clear for some time that Obamacare was constructed by people with a lack of basic understanding of health care, of insurance, of business, of economics, of politics, of taxes, of employment, of the American people, and of the English language.
Nice piece of parliamentary procedure though.
I imagine they keep trying because 1) their base demands it. Never give up. Never surrender. 2) With a 5-4 majority on that issue, and Kennedy and Scalia being old enough to retire/die suddenly, it pays to always have a case pending in the pipe for at least the 2 years.
It’s only those pesky Christians who care. Not seemingly a target demographic of this bunch of characters.
I figure the Obama Administration figures that when the Supreme Court rules against them, they’ll just gin up another Two Minutes Hate against them.