ObamaCrapCare Could Lose Big If Hobby Lobby Wins In The Supreme Court--Every Religious Business Owner Will Claim Exemption From The Law--We Will Be First In Line

US Wants Supreme Court to Take up Hobby Lobby Case

Thursday, 19 Sep 2013 06:45 PM

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The federal government is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Hobby Lobby and a Christian bookstore chain have to provide a wide range of birth control options for workers as part of the federal health care law.
The 251-page appeal was filed Thursday.
The Oklahoma businesses have operated under a court order that allows them to avoid fines while they challenge a portion of the new law requiring them to provide the coverage.
Company attorneys object to offering such plans based on religious grounds.
U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton in July granted the Hobby Lobby craft store chain and Mardel Christian bookstore, its sister company, a temporary exemption from a requirement that it provide insurance coverage for morning-after pills, similar emergency birth control methods and intrauterine devices.
Government lawyers intend to fight a court order that lets Hobby Lobby and the Mardel Christian bookstore chain avoid fines while they challenge a portion of the new federal health care law requiring them to provide a wide range of birth control options for its workers.
Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services filed a notice in federal court this week saying it would appeal. Heaton had given the government an Oct. 1 deadline.
Lawyers for the companies' owners, the Green family, say following all provisions of the new federal health care law would either violate their religious beliefs or cost them millions of dollars in fines. The Green family believes life begins at conception; emergency birth control methods and the IUD prevent fertilized eggs from implantation. The company's insurance plans do offer 16 other forms of birth control mentioned in the federal health care act.
Heaton last November rejected companies' request to block the birth-control mandate. He reconsidered his decision after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the companies were likely to prevail in the case. Heaton ruled in June that the company would not be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day for not offering the birth control methods.
Kyle Duncan, Hobby Lobby's lead attorney, has argued that requiring the company to comply with the mandate would be a burden to religious exercise. A DHS lawyer, Michelle Bennett, said an injunction could create a burden for Hobby Lobby's 13,000 employees and members of their families who would be denied coverage for the emergency contraceptives.
When he handed down his ruling in July, Heaton said he was surprised the 10th Circuit seemed to extend a person's constitutional religious exercise rights to a business but said the injunction should be granted in the public interest so courts could resolve "substantial unanswered questions."
The government filed its notice Tuesday.

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