Latest news with #LittleSistersofthePoor
Medscape
4 days ago
- Politics
- Medscape
US Judge Blocks Religious Exemption to Birth Control Coverage
(Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday struck down rules adopted during President Donald Trump's first term that exempt employers with religious or moral objections from having to provide workers with insurance coverage for birth control. U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia said the 2018 rules were not justified, rejecting the Trump administration's claims that they were necessary to protect the rights of religious employers. The ruling came in a lawsuit by Pennsylvania and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2020 upheld the rules on technical grounds but did not address their merits. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns that intervened in the case to defend the rules, will appeal the ruling, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that represents the order. The federal Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception but allows those with religious objections to seek exemptions. The 2018 rules created a blanket exemption for employers with religious or moral objections to contraception. The Trump administration said that even requiring employers to apply for an exemption could burden their religious practice, in violation of federal law. But Beetlestone on Wednesday said there was a mismatch between the vast scope of the exemption and the relatively small number of employers who may need it. That "casts doubt on whether ... there is a rational connection between the problem the Agencies identified and the solution they had chosen," wrote Beetlestone, an appointee of President Barack Obama, a Democrat. The administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had proposed withdrawing the Trump administration rules in 2023 but that proposal was withdrawn weeks before Biden left office in January. (Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
New York Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Little Sisters of the Poor are still fighting ObamaCare— as states force nuns to violate their faith
It's enraging. More than a decade after the Obama administration first tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to buy contraception including abortifacient drugs for employees, states are still hounding the nuns in court. At its heart, ObamaCare was a massive welfare program meant to redistribute health-care costs to the middle class. But it was also a social engineering project aimed at coercing religious organizations and businesses to adopt progressive values. The Affordable Care Act mandated employers, including nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for contraceptives in their worker-provided health insurance as an 'essential health benefit' under the euphemistic category of 'preventative and wellness services.' There was no 'religious exemption.' It's worth taking a step back and thinking about that term: The very idea that an American citizen should be impelled to ask the state for an 'exemption' to practice their faith is an assault on the fundamental idea of liberty. Imagine having to ask the state for an exemption to exercise your free speech? What makes the case even more unsettling, of course, is that the state is demanding citizens engage in activity that is explicitly against their faith. Now, there may well be numerous theological disputes within the Catholic Church. The use of contraception and abortion aren't among them. There is absolutely no question that nuns hold genuine, long-standing religious convictions. And there is no question that liberals want to smash them. Nevertheless, the Little Sisters spent years in court, working their way up to the Supreme Court and winning protections against the federal government (twice). In 2017, the Trump administration exempted religious groups like the Little Sisters from the ObamaCare mandate entirely. The government, however, bolstered with unlimited taxpayer funds, can hunt its prey in perpetuity. So states such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania began their own lawsuits against the Little Sisters. This week, in a nationwide ruling, Judge Wendy Beetlestone, chief judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that the Trump administration's expansion of religious exemptions from the contraception mandate was 'arbitrary and capricious.' Religious nonprofit groups and businesses will again have to ask for special accommodations from the Department of Health and Human Services to avoid buying abortifacients. Even if the Trump administration grants every one of them, one day there will be authoritarians in charge who won't — and nonprofit employees will still be guaranteed contraception through health plans paid for by employers. Beetlestone, incidentally, was the same judge who issued a nationwide injunction against the contraception exemption back in 2017, arguing it was 'difficult' to think of any rule that 'intrudes more into the lives of women.' The Supreme Court overturned it in 2020 by a 7-2 majority. Because no one has a right to free condoms. Indeed, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act holds that the state must have a 'compelling interest' and use the least restrictive means when burdening religious practice. Free birth control isn't a compelling interest. And fining religious organizations millions of dollars to pressure them into abandoning their beliefs is perhaps the most restrictive means of action, short of throwing nuns in prison. You'd think attacking a group of nuns who offer end-of-life care for the elderly would be a public relations nightmare for Democrats. Yet they've never really shied away from it. Because the point is to intimidate others. In many ways, the Little Sisters' struggle is reminiscent of the travails of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who refuses to create unique message cakes for gay weddings. Phillips is now embroiled in his umpteenth court case over his crimes. The message: Dissent from those who practice their faith will be punished. Take the Catholic Charities adoption agencies, which shuttered in numerous states due to laws and policies compelling them to place children with same-sex couples. The attacks will continue until the Supreme Court upholds the clear language and intent of the First Amendment and religious liberty. It's already punted once: In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a 7-2 Supreme Court decision in favor of Jack Phillips, the court barred the state's attacks only if state officials openly demeaned their target's faith — a ruling so narrow as to be largely useless. But it shouldn't matter why the state is steamrolling the religious liberty of nuns, or anyone else for that matter. The problem is that the ObamaCare mandate is authoritarian and unconstitutional. And the only way to fix that problem is to overturn it. David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Twitter @davidharsanyi
Time of India
4 days ago
- Health
- Time of India
US judge blocks Trump religious exemption to birth control coverage
A U.S. judge on Wednesday struck down rules adopted during President Donald Trump's first term that exempt employers with religious or moral objections from having to provide workers with insurance coverage for birth control. U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia said the 2018 rules were not justified, rejecting the Trump administration's claims that they were necessary to protect the rights of religious employers. The ruling came in a lawsuit by Pennsylvania and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2020 upheld the rules on technical grounds but did not address their merits. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns that intervened in the case to defend the rules, will appeal the ruling, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that represents the order. The federal Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception but allows those with religious objections to seek exemptions. The 2018 rules created a blanket exemption for employers with religious or moral objections to contraception. The Trump administration said that even requiring employers to apply for an exemption could burden their religious practice, in violation of federal law. But Beetlestone on Wednesday said there was a mismatch between the vast scope of the exemption and the relatively small number of employers who may need it. That "casts doubt on whether ... there is a rational connection between the problem the Agencies identified and the solution they had chosen," wrote Beetlestone, an appointee of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
The Hill
4 days ago
- Health
- The Hill
Federal judge blocks Trump administration's broad birth control mandate exemptions
The Trump administration's religious and moral carve-outs to an ObamaCare requirement that all employer health plans cover contraception at no cost were blocked on Wednesday by a federal judge. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia issued a summary judgment that the rules were arbitrary, capricious and an overreach of the authority of the agencies that wrote them in 2017. Under the rules, essentially any for-profit or nonprofit employer or insurer was allowed to exempt themselves from following the birth control mandate on moral and religious grounds. The rules also let publicly traded companies obtain a religious exemption, but not a moral one. The Affordable Care Act required employer health plans to cover at least one of 18 forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Religious groups and employers sued, and the Supreme Court in 2014 ruled 5-4 that the contraceptive mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) rights of closely held corporations whose owners had religious objections. Subsequent agency actions tried to find a balance, but the Trump administration in 2017 issued a blanket exemption. The rules didn't require employers to apply for an exemption because the administration said that would be a violation of their religious rights. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and dozens of other states sued to halt that broad expansion of exemptions and accommodations. That lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in 2020, where the justices upheld the Trump rules on technical grounds but did not address the underlying merits of the case. The case was sent back to the lower court, where a religious group, Little Sisters of the Poor, joined the lawsuit alongside the federal government in asking for summary judgment. Beetlestone, an appointee of former President Obama, wrote that the Trump administration's religious rule did not accomplish what the agencies purportedly wrote it to do, which was to resolve a conflict between the contraceptive mandate and RFRA. But the rule exemptions to organizations that are 'unlikely, if ever, to be capable of maintaining a religious objection, raising further doubts as to any 'rational connection' between the Rule and remedying potential conflicts with RFRA,' Beetlestone wrote. The Little Sisters of the Poor will appeal the ruling in the coming weeks, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that represents the order.
GMA Network
5 days ago
- Health
- GMA Network
US judge blocks Trump religious exemption to birth control coverage
A U.S. judge on Wednesday struck down rules adopted during President Donald Trump's first term that exempt employers with religious or moral objections from having to provide workers with insurance coverage for birth control. U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia said the 2018 rules were not justified, rejecting the Trump administration's claims that they were necessary to protect the rights of religious employers. The ruling came in a lawsuit by Pennsylvania and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2020 upheld the rules on technical grounds but did not address their merits. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns that intervened in the case to defend the rules, will appeal the ruling, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that represents the order. The federal Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception but allows those with religious objections to seek exemptions. The 2018 rules created a blanket exemption for employers with religious or moral objections to contraception. The Trump administration said that even requiring employers to apply for an exemption could burden their religious practice, in violation of federal law. But Beetlestone on Wednesday said there was a mismatch between the vast scope of the exemption and the relatively small number of employers who may need it. That "casts doubt on whether ... there is a rational connection between the problem the Agencies identified and the solution they had chosen," wrote Beetlestone, an appointee of President Barack Obama, a Democrat. The administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had proposed withdrawing the Trump administration rules in 2023 but that proposal was withdrawn weeks before Biden left office in January. — Reuters
