Posted on 09/17/2012 12:22:52 PM PDT by fungoking
College of the Ozarks Standing Up For Religious Freedom
On September 17, 2012, the 225th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, College of the Ozarks sought to enforce its Constitutional rights by suing those federal agencies (Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, Department of the Treasury) tasked with implementation of the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”).
Here are the College’s concerns, which will be brought before a federal court.
The College believes that the Contraceptive Mandate contained in the Affordable Health Care Act violates its sincerely-held religious beliefs by requiring that the College’s health insurance plan contain coverage or access to coverage for elective abortion services, certain FDA-approved abortifacient drugs, and related education and counseling. The Mandate exposes the College to substantial fines for the exercise of its religious beliefs. This violates the College’s rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The Mandate’s requirements compel the College to operate in a manner contrary to its religious beliefs, thus violating the guarantee of free speech as set out in the First Amendment.
The College’s compliance with its sincerely-held religious beliefs is the exercise of religion within the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Mandate, narrowly-crafted religious employer exemption, and “safe harbor” make it impossible for the College to comply with its religious beliefs. The enforcement of these provisions violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
The Act also violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that prohibits the establishment of any national religion, excessive government entanglement with religion, and the preference by the government of one religion over another. The Act creates a tiered exemption of more religious and less religious organizations. The former are exempt from the Mandate and the latter are not. This is an impermissible distinction in violation of the Establishment Clause.
The actions of the government have resulted in legal challenge. The government, in response, has issued a series of modifications and interpretations of the Act designed to bolster the argument that the courts do not have jurisdiction to review, because the government is not done coming up with a way to address the concerns that have been raised. In essence, the government’s actions are designed to prevent judicial review and scrutiny of the Act’s illegal provisions.
Time has run out for the College and the thousands of religious institutions that find themselves caught in the untenable position of having to choose between their religious beliefs and compliance with laws that interfere with the basic tenets upon which this country was formed.
The C of O is unique in America.
All students have some sort of part time job that supports the school.
“All students have some sort of part time job that supports the school.”
Hard Work U
In the college president’s speech to parents, “we have been ranked in the top 10 unfriendless collge campuses for LGBT students, next year we hope to be #1.
I visited their web page, looking for a sweatshirt.
I noticed that C of O has NO TUITION. All students pay their way by working in the college.
I have known just one graduate of this school and he mentioned his “work to get through.”
Don’t we just wish ALL collages were set up like this one....we have been down there often in times past....love their restaurant, and the food is delicious, and served by student staff.
Neighbor kid graduated from there, debt-free.
The reason they can trade tuition for work is their unique location in the center of a major tourist destination.
I have a close relative who's a professor there. Nice story...
Let's face it: every college can't be located in the center of a sparsely populated major year-round tourist destination where work for tuition would be a viable economic model.
Hillsdale College (Michigan) has rolled out a successful model of kicking out government loans for tuition in total so Fedzilla can have zero say in how the College is run. They've done this by lining up their own pool of lenders who understand that Hillsdale graduates actually learn something useful, are highly employable and have an excellent record of paying back their loans.
Their model has worked so well that I'm aware of at least three other conservative campuses adopting at least part of the same model-- Grove City (here in Pennsylvania), Liberty University (Virginia) and Brigham Young (campuses in Utah and Idaho). I don't think they are the only ones, just the only ones of which I am aware.
This trend is only going to grow as more and more businesses figure out that kids who had the initiative to find colleges which didn't crush them with unsustainable debt loads also have the common sense to make great new hires.
The work is done on campus. They have a beef and hog operation, a dairy, landscaping crews. A student I know worked on a new dormitory this summer and next year they will break ground for another one. Students will do the work on it also. The college has been around 100 years and Branson was not always in the tourist business. It is a VERY GOOD school.
Watch as dictatorial Washington Dictates to us the limits(or lack there of) of its own power.
The very fact that we must appeal to hand picked Federal employees for redress of their own Constitutional transgressions and then accept their edict is in itself proof positive that the Federal Constitution signed 225 years ago is dead.
We live under an Oligarchy at best not a Constitutional republic.
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