Category: abortion

W. Dist. N.C.: Religious Pro-Life Demonstrators may proceed in challenge to COVID Order on religious, not free-speech grounds

W. Dist. N.C.: Religious Pro-Life Demonstrators may proceed in challenge to COVID Order on religious, not free-speech grounds. The court granted a motion to dismiss Global Impact Ministries, Cities4Life, and Cities4Life’s president’ claims against Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to the extent they were based on the First Amendment’s Free Speech clause. But it allowed the prochoice group to proceed in its challenge based on the Free Exercise clause, pointing to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the government’s permitting secular activities during the relevant period. Religion Clause has more details here. Read the order here.

“Trump Administration Set to Roll Back Birth Control Mandate”

“Trump Administration Set to Roll Back Birth Control Mandate” Robert Pear of the New York Times has this report about coming exemptions to regulations under Affordable Care Act that require employers to provide coverage for contraceptives. The new exemptions allow employers or insurers that object to covering contraceptive based sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions. Houses of worship and similar religious employers were exempted under the Obama-era rules, but other religious organizations, including hospitals and schools, and entities that were not overtly religious but that were owned by individuals with religious objections to the coverage were required to provide the coverage. The 2014 Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby held that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) required an exception for closely held, for-profit corporations controlled by owners who object to paying for contraceptives. In 2016 the Supreme Court considered a group of cases brought under RFRA by religious nonprofits, colleges, and schools that sought to expand the exemption as it applied to houses of worship to those groups. Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016). The Supreme Court did not decide the issue, instead remanding the case and encouraging the sides to explore alternative resolution. In May President Trump highlighted one of the groups in that consolidated case, the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, praising the nuns who run that organization for their challenge and promising these changes allowing their objections to be accommodated.

ECFA reports on the decision here.