Far-reaching arguments made by some religious nonprofits against an accommodation procedure can endanger religious liberty, according to a brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia School of Law.
In a document filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty disagreed with religious organizations including GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention suing the federal government over Obamacare.
The friend-of-the-court brief prepared Feb. 15 with University of Virginia professor and constitutional law expert Douglas Laycock argues that the government’s process for accommodating faith-based charities with moral objections to including contraception in their employee insurance plans provides adequate protection of religious liberty.
In seven cases consolidated for oral argument before the Supreme Court March 23, ministries including GuideStone, Truett-McConnell College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University and Oklahoma Baptist University say they want to be treated just like churches and “integrated auxiliaries” such as denominational bodies and agencies that are completely exempt from the contraceptive mandate.
The groups, which serve a broader purpose than religious indoctrination and hire people of differing faiths, say having to request a religious accommodation from a portion of the Affordable Care Act substantially burdens their religious exercise, because the end result is that forms of birth control they view as immoral are still available without cost to their employees.
The BJC brief acknowledges the burden placed by the HHS rules might seem “substantial” to the groups making the claim, “but substantial to the believer is not inevitably the same as substantial in law.” What they really want, the brief contends, is “absolute” deference to their religious liberty claim, opening the door to “absurd results that would discredit the cause of religious liberty.”
Holly Hollman
“The government has provided a careful system of exemptions that responds to religious objections about contraception without depriving thousands of employees important health care benefits,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee.
“This is the win-win solution the Court pointed to in the Hobby Lobby case,” she said, referring to the 2014 Supreme Court decision that allows closely held for-profit corporations to refuse to pay for methods of birth-control they believe are intended to induce abortion without interfering with the government’s goal of insurance that covers preventive services including the full range of FDA-approved contraceptives.
As part of the coalition that worked 25 years ago for passage of the landmark Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the BJC says in the brief that “we are extremely reluctant to oppose a RFRA claim.”
“But religious liberty can be endangered by exaggerated claims and overreaching as well as by government intransigence and judicial under enforcement,” the brief states. It says various arguments in cases before the high court “endanger religious liberty, both legally and politically.”
The BJC brief says regulations in the cases do not substantially burden the petitioners’ religious exercise, because they are wholly exempted from providing contraception themselves. Their real objection is to how the government regulates secular insurers required to provide the coverage in their stead.
“These objections reach too far,” the brief contends. “They are in fact objections to the government pursuing its own interests by its own means.”
Hollman welcomed legislative and administrative exemptions that protect religious liberty without harming other important interests.
“The religious organizations have been relieved of paying or contracting for services,” Hollman said in a press release Feb. 18. “Their RFRA claims, however, cannot extend to the government’s regulation of secular insurers.”