District Court judge in NY strikes down HHS contraception mandate

Well, some good news for a change.  A federal district court judge in NY essentially deconstructed the HHS Mandate, finding numerous faults and injustices in the legislation.  If you recall, Obama claimed to solve the problem of forcing religious employers with moral objections to contraception and chemical abortion by forcing their insurers to pay for the coverage, which was always a scam, the insurers would simply turn around and charge the religious employers.  The judge has found that unconstitutional, stating that even the “exemption” is an unbearable burden upon the free exercise of religion.

The prime litigant in this victory was the Archdiocese of New York.  Below are some highlights from the judge’s ruling as outlined on Ace O Spades:

1. This is the first litigation to result in a final injunction against the contraception mandate for religious non-profit organizations that come within the Obama Administration’s purported exemption to the mandate. [I kind of already explained that above]

2. Not even the Obama administration knows what its proposed regulations do. Very late in this case, the government realized that, although the Archdiocese and its constituent organizations are covered by the mandate, the regulations might not actually force a third party they designate to provide the objectionable contraception coverage……The judge found that, despite the administration’s contortions to suggest the Archdiocese might not even be covered, the contraception mandate scheme was sufficiently burdensome to proceed to a decision.

3. The Obama administration doesn’t take religious beliefs seriously. In an astonishing display of anti-religious sentiment, the administration argued that forcing religious organizations to designate a third party to provide contraception coverage to their employees isn’t a big deal (legally: de minimis) because it’s “just a form” to fill out, “a purely administrative task.” The district court rightly found that whether a violation of religious freedom is small or large isn’t for the courts to decide. It would be too easy to simply sweep away deeply-held religious beliefs under the claim that government action is merely “de minimis” infringement of rights.  [They are not anti-religious.  The Obama administration is very in favor of certain religious practices like wicca and islam. They are anti-Christian.]

4. The Obama administration has handed out so many exceptions to the law, it can no longer claim the law serves a compelling purpose. In the past, courts have allowed the government to infringe religious rights if the government demonstrates a compelling interest and narrow tailoring, for example, income tax laws or criminal laws related to marijuana and peyote. But in this case, the administration was not able to claim that the contraception mandate serves a compelling purpose because it has been falling all over itself (largely for political reasons) to offer exceptions to the law.  [Great point, and hoisted on their own petard.]

5. The Obama administration’s belated argument that the religious organizations may not actually end up providing any contraception coverage fatally undermined the administration’s case. This comes under the category of bad litigation strategies. As I mentioned up in the second item on this list, the administration realized near the end of the litigation that the third parties designated by the Archdiocese to provide coverage may not actually be required to provide contraception. The district court rightly noticed that if that argument is true, the mandate obviously serves no purpose.   [So Obama is both a doctrinaire leftist AND incompetent.  I think we already knew that.]

6. The Obama administration thinks it has a general exception from complying with the Constitution. The administration, as it has frequently done with respect to disobeying laws it does not like, argued that it had to enforce the contraception mandate in such an infringing manner because it could not do it any other way. The district court pointed out the obvious flaw in this line of thinking…….Of course, we all know that President Obama cannot go back to Congress to fix this since Congress would most likely provide a wider exemption to the contraception mandate than Obama’s HHS has provided via regulation, assuming Congress doesn’t just start trimming out major portions of the law, altogether. This is a problem of the administration’s own making, and there it will stay — until the courts finish knocking it down, that is.

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Well, that’s good news. It looks like the USCCB’s plan of hoping the courts would bail them out on this before they had to make a do or die decision to pay for contraception and abortion coverage (hint: they already do, in many if not almost all dioceses) may work out after all.  The law is of course unconstitutional and one of the most blatant persecutions of organized religions we’ve ever seen in this country, but you wouldn’t know it from the media’s almost totally absent coverage.

One small step, and all that, I suppose…….