The archdioceses in America went to federal court today to challenge the Obama administration on the contraception and abortion mandates in Obamacare. At least a dozen federal lawsuits were filed against the The Obama administration by 43 plaintiffs. The Archdiocese of New York filed suit and was joined by the crown jewel in Catholic education in America, Notre Dame. The Catholic Church has a long history of left-liberalism and entanglement with leftist government run by Democrats. So it is ironic that they have joined with the conservatives in their midst to stand up for the rights of religious Catholics to be free of government mandates in respect of their religion. It seems Obama disrespect for their religious beliefs may have been a wake-up call.
Hooray.
The suits argue that, “The issue is not about whether people have a right to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. Those services are freely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the Government itself from making them more widely available.” The issue is whether the government can force private religious institutions to make them available and pay for something their religious teaching regards as sinful.
The underlying premise of the government’s mandate is that pregnancy is an illness that must be covered under employer-sponsored group health insurance. I guess if you care so little about nascent human life it is possible to view pregnancy as an illness in need of treatment, as if it were cancer.
An editorial in the New York Sun has this:
It is early in the legal maneuvering over the contraception mandates, but it’s not too early to predict that the case the Catholic Church has just launched has the potential to emerge as one of the great civil rights lawsuits of our time. Or to observe that a much wider population than the millions of Catholics in this country has a stake in the outcome. The various organizations that represent many of the non-Catholic Christian communities, the Muslims, and the religious Jews will no doubt be watching this case with gratitude. And with the hope that if this case can be won they can get off the defensive on other religious issues.
As mentioned above, Notre Dame is one of the plaintiffs. Obama was its commencement speaker in 2009. Heh.
If you were a Supreme on the fence about your vote on Obamacare, would these suit filings by the Archdioceses have any impact on your ultimate vote, Ken?
Since I personally would have never been on the fence about Obamacare, no these suits would have no effect on me. Of course, I hope my personal political leanings would not come into play but in my life I’ve seldom known of a judge anywhere at anytime who kept his or her political leanings out of his or her decision making process. So, maybe I would not be the one and only unbiased and objective judge on the planet.
The attacks Obama has been making on the court just might influence their decision. It never pays to attack an institution that enjoys lifetime tenure, at least not unless you have a strong and rational argument to make. Obama doesn’t. The potential for backfire is great, although the justices won’t express it overtly. These attacks won’t both the four liberals since they no doubt believe it’s not aimed and them and agree wholeheartedly anyway. But it’s exactly the sort of thing that could influence an undecided judge, of which there is only one on the court that might fit that category. He’s the one everyone believes must be persuaded in every case because he is the “swing vote.” Making him angry, if Obama’s attacks have that effect, is most unwise.
There is one other interesting aspect of possible court reaction to Obama’s attacks. Even though the vitriol is aimed at Justice Scalia and the other conservatives, it may not sit well with Justice Ginsburg. While Ginsburg and Scalia rarely if ever agree on the outcome of a case before them, they are good friends and regularly attend opera together. Also, Ginburg’s late husband, Martin Ginsburg, was a prolific legal scholar of wide renown, admiration and respect. All of the conservative justices probably know his work in Federal taxation and may even have consulted it in deciding cases in the area of Federal taxation. That probably makes for a certain level of simpatico between them and Justice Ginsburg.