Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. –Today the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government cannot fine the Little Sisters of the Poor.  The Supreme Court vacated the lower court rulings against the Little Sisters, accepting the government’s admission that it could meet its goals of providing the free services to women without involving the Little Sisters or using their plan.  The Court also ordered the lower Courts to help the government choose an alternative method of providing the services that does not require the participation of the Little Sisters. (see Sister Constance’s reaction here)

Many reporters attending oral arguments in the Supreme Court sit in assigned chairs on the far left side of the chamber. These chairs stand behind a double row of massive marble columns. Brass gates, some opened and some closed, stretch between the columns; burgundy curtains, pulled back by cords, hang behind them. Given their assigned seats, some reporters may not be able to see any of the justices holding forth at the front of the chamber. All they hear are their voices. Because the court only releases a transcript and audio recording of its arguments, the only Americans who definitely...

A few months ago, a young American woman named Kate decided to organize a choir in a refugee camp. To do so, she went to Germany, as a visiting guest artist at the American Academy in Berlin. She settled down around the block from a Red Cross building. Her camp is a gym with about 200 asylum-seekers, coming currently from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Moldova and Vietnam. Oh, to see the faces of the children Kate is working with as part of the Hutto Project, named after her late music teacher, Benjamin Hutto, who worked out of the National Cathedral...

The passage of the Affordable Care Act -- aka Obamacare -- in 2010 launched the tea party movement and planted seeds of resentment toward the Washington establishment that rages across the nation today. And there's no better of example of why this movement of outrage has grown and accelerated than the case -- Zubik v. Burwell -- now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Zubik v. Burwell, more popularly known as Obamacare v. Little Sisters of the Poor, is about the Obamacare mandate requiring employers and private insurance plans to provide cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. These provisions...

First, I urge you to watch this short video about the Little Sisters of the Poor. Then, try to wrap your mind around the fact that today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the religious order must comply with Obamacare’s abortion mandate, forcing the group to pay for birth control and other drugs that may cause abortions. More from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty: The Tenth Circuit heard oral argument in this case in December of last year, when for the first time since the case began, Sr. Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial of the Little...

“Nuns hopeful of stay,” read the headlines. No, they weren’t going to be executed. Only their consciences were to be violated. The HHS Mandate was going to force them to cover abortifacient drugs that can end the lives of unborn children. Now, and only temporarily, the Supreme Court has stayed the execution of the HHS Mandate under ObamaCare. Never in America’s long history has such a headline even been imaginable. The gravest threat to religious freedom has been part of what President Obama meant when he said he would “fundamentally transform this country.” Nuns have faced anti-Catholicism, Bible riots, and...