Posted on 06/20/2014 6:57:41 AM PDT by topher
IRONDALE, AL – A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the network founded by Mother Angelica must comply with the HHS mandate, despite its deep-seated religious objections, because the ObamaCare provision does not violate the First Amendment.
"EWTN doesn't have to comply with the mandate. All it has to do is sign a form certifying its opposition to the use of contraceptives and then deliver that form to its third-party administrator."
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade ruled in Mobile that the Obama administration may compel the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) to comply with a provision furnishing female employees with contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs, because the network does not directly supply the service
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
The government wants Jesus to sign a form so his listeners can be financed to kill their babies.
“Caesar is so busy, poor guy.” says Jesus. “Give me that form. Didn’t I say, ‘Let the little children come unto me....as soon as possible?”
Don’t see how they can possible think this is a religious issue.
/sarc
George W.
Just don’t comply. It works for illegal immigrants. This law is unconstitutional and these lawless judges deserve the pit.
Here’s where EWTN is getting it wrong:
“As an organization that was founded by Mother Angelica to uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church, we do not believe...”
Their argument against “contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and voluntary sterilization” being characterized as “health care” has to be asserted as a clash between new legislation and pre-existing, Constitutionally protected rights, not predicated on their identity.
They should have asserted plainly, “Our Constitutionally protected practice of religion rejects contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and voluntary sterilization as morally reprehensible. The mandates invoked by the ACA force a conflict between compliance with the ACA, and our Constitutionally protected religious rights, in which conflict The Constitution prevails. We, therefore, stand with The Constitution in regarding the mandates that the ACA seeks to impose as unconstitutional, and in all aspects utterly null and void. We shall at no time — neither now, nor in the future — accept, or comply with, any contravention of The Constitution limiting or infringing upon our full and unmitigated access to all rights therein enumerated.”
You were quoting from a brief EWTN Website statement rather than their official/professional argument from law? What makes you think that their lawyers do not fully and correctly understand the issue and are dealing with it appropriately.
Their brief statement doesn’t faithfully recap the substance of their legal argument?
Characterizing their argument one way on a web page, and another way in court doesn’t strike a sour note?
Characterizing their argument one way on a web page, and another way in court doesn’t strike a sour note?
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No, not at all. Each are geared to specific audiences and purposes, using the appropriate language register.
I get that there should be language differences; one geared to the courtroom, the other to the man-on-the-street. What there should NOT be is differences of substance such that reading the summary and reading the court documents would present the reader with two different arguments. The summary should be a layman’s language synopsis of the seminal argument being made before the court; not substantively variant pablum crafted for easy digestion by the American Idle.
The Constitutional argument that they enjoy protection under the Free Exercise Clause is the strongest appeal to legal authority they have, here. Why assert that argument before the courts, but present something weaker to the public mind? That makes no sense.
That is why I construed their summary as their core argument before the courts; it is why I would not have expected their court case to be centered upon anything different than what they presented in their summary. And what they presented in their summary, seems a weaker argument than the one I presented.
The Free Exercise Clause is strong enough to protect religious people from being drafted into the military, and that during wartime; it is certainly strong enough to protect religious people from being forced to pay for others’ morally debatable — AND, I might add, entirely OPTIONAL — acts. The interest of the State in compelling able-bodied men to serve in combat at an hour of dire national need does not trump the individual’s free exercise of his religious faith. Against the towering stature of that national need, which has been made to bow down before the Free Exercise Clause of The Constitution, how does the State’s argument in this case even begin to register? Does the flea outweigh the pachyderm?
How absurd!
Since a man cannot be compelled to go to war for this nation if acts of war are repugnant to his faith, neither can a man can be compelled to pay for others’ access to health services if the acts proceeding from such access are repugnant to his faith. As The State has seen its claim of compelling interest struck down in the former case, ever so much more must it also be struck down in the latter.
I pray to God that is the argument they are making, but their summary scarcely hints as much.
I think we should tell this federal tyrant in a black robe just where his patronizing edict belongs.
Men like that don’t deserve the respect of countrymen to whom they give no respect and act with no respect.
Meanwhile Muslims need not worry about any mandates. “Equal protection” is for those who are more equal than others.
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