10th Circuit Court of Appeals Grants Hobby Lobby Reprieve on Obamacare Fines
Friday, June 28, 2013 1:26
(Reuters) - Arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby may be exempt from a requirement in U.S. President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare overhaul to provide free contraception coverage in its employee health insurance plans, a federal appeals court ruled.
Thursday's decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver could spare the family-owned company from potentially paying millions of dollars in fines as soon as next week for not complying with the law.
In reversing a lower-court ruling that rejected Hobby Lobby's request for an exemption, the 10th Circuit drew praise from groups that oppose the coverage mandate, and criticism from groups favoring reproductive rights and church-state separation.
As the Greens explain their complaint, the ACA’s mandate requires them to violate their religious faith by forcing them to lend an impermissible degree of assistance to conduct their religion teaches to be gravely wrong. No one before us disputes that the mandate compels Hobby Lobby and Mardel to underwrite payments for drugs or devices that can have the effect of destroying a fertilized human egg. No one disputes that the Greens’ religion teaches them that the use of such drugs or devices is gravely wrong. It is no less clear from the Greens’ uncontested allegations that Hobby Lobby and Mardel cannot comply with the mandate unless and until the Greens direct them to do so — that they are the human actors who must compel the corporations to comply with the mandate. And it is this fact, the Greens contend, that poses their problem. As they understand it, ordering their companies to provide insurance coverage for drugs or devices whose use is inconsistent with their faith itself violates their faith, representing a degree of complicity their religion disallows. In light of the crippling penalties the mandate imposes for failing to comply with its dictates — running as high as $475 million per year — the Greens contend they confront no less than a choice between exercising their faith or saving their business.
Hohum! Well, what about a woman's right not to be violated by religious faith and inflicted with unwanted pregnancies.
Do the religious ethics of the Greens extend to granting men insurance for unlimited supplies of Viagra, Cialis and other drugs for erectile dysfunction?
It should be noted that there are six pages of friends of the court in regard to this case, including anti-abortion luminaries such as Texas Center for Defense of life, National Legal Founation, Life Liberty and Law Foundation, American Center for Law and Justice, Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Bioethics Defense Fund, Life Legal Defense Foundation, Missouri Roundtable for Life, Eagle Forum, various U.S. Senators such as Daniel Coats (IN), Thad Cochran (MS), Chuck Grassley (IA), Orrin Hatch (UT), James Inhofe (OK), Mitch McConnell (KY), Pat Roberts (KS), Richard Shelby (AL). just so women know who their enemies are. There are even a few friends of the court who are also friends of women, but they rate less than a page.