Richard A. Sokerka
If you don’t think that our religious freedoms in this nation are being compromised by the day, just ask the Little Sisters of the Poor what they think.
They are among several hundred plaintiffs who have challenged the federal contraception mandate, which requires employers to offer health insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization and drugs that can cause early abortions. Employers who fail to comply with the mandate face crippling penalties. The fines could amount to around $2.5 million a year for the Little Sisters, who raise funds for their ministry by begging at parishes.
Last week a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against an exemption to the mandate for the Little Sisters of the Poor. After the ruling, Mother Provincial Sister Loraine Marie Maguire said, “As Little Sisters of the Poor, we simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith. And we should not have to make that choice, because it violates our nation’s commitment to ensuring that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives. For over 175 years, we have served the neediest in society with love and dignity. All we ask is to be able to continue our religious vocation free from government intrusion.”
Last year, the Little Sisters had received temporary protection from the mandate penalties from the U.S. Supreme Court while their case was working its way through the court system. The federal government had argued that it has sufficiently provided for the religious freedom of the Little Sisters through an “accommodation” under which the faith-based employers can pass the burden of providing the objectionable coverage to insurers, who must then offer it to employees without cost. Several religious organizations voiced their objection to signing a form that passes the burden of providing the contraceptives they find violates their beliefs to another party.
The Tenth Circuit Court ruled that because the Little Sisters had the option of signing the form, they failed to show that the mandate required a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion. Mark Rienzi, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is helping to defend the Little Sisters, wants to know why the government “continues its unrelenting pursuit of the Little Sisters of the Poor?”
“It is a national embarrassment that the world’s most powerful government insists that, instead of providing contraceptives through its own existing exchanges and programs, it must crush the Little Sisters’ faith and force them to participate,” he said.
The Becket Fund must appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. If not, once again, we will see more of our religious liberties eroded by the federal government.a