Supreme Court rules in favor of religious employers objecting to Obamacare contraception insurance coverage compromise

SCOTUS Kicks Contraceptive Mandate Case Back to Lower Courts https://t.co/GsTfAqKnJK #trending

— PJ Media (@PJMedia_com) May 16, 2016

Supreme Court sends 'contraception mandate' cases back to lower courts... https://t.co/uTHLs2VPqe

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) May 16, 2016

BREAKING: Supreme Court rules in favor of religious employers objecting to Obamacare contraception insurance coverage compromise - Reuters

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) May 16, 2016

Liberal darling and free-birth-control advocate Sandra Fluke is her own biggest donor in her state Senate race, according to official California campaign finance reports.

◼ Fluke donated $12,000 to her campaign and $4,826.27 in non-monetary contributions. While $16,826.27 may not sound like a lot, Fluke also loaned her campaign $100,000. - Ashe Schow/Washington Examiner

Where does a 2012 law school grad working as a social justice attorney get a loan that size? Her campaign never responded to a Washington Examiner inquiry, so we’re left to speculate.

Perhaps the loan was in part secured by the family of Fluke’s husband, Adam Mutterperl. In 2012, Fluke married Mutterperl, an amateur stand-up comic and son of big-time Democratic donor William Mutterperl.

A fired up Megyn Kelly lit up Nancy Pelosi Thursday night on The Kelly File over the House Minority Leader’s comments earlier in the day on the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision.

◼ Here’s the line that got Megyn so riled up: - IJ Review

“We should be afraid of this court, that five guys are determining which contraceptives are legal or not.”

Democrats plan on making Hobby Lobby their midterm message

The latest Dem 2014 strategy centers on fomenting outrage over SCOTUS's Hobby Lobby ruling. http://t.co/E8Ymu9EwBK via @EdMorrissey

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 10, 2014

◼ So says Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn, but color me skeptical. Not of Haberkorn’s reporting on the subject, which accurately takes the temperature of the rhetoric from the Left, but of the bravado coming from Capitol Hill Democrats in the dog days of July. - Ed Morrissey/HotAir

Democrats claim they want to make a midterm fight over a relatively narrow Supreme Court decision that doesn’t restrict access to contraception in any way as a means to fire up their “war on women” rhetoric and turn out their base in what looks like a dismal election cycle... Good luck with that strategy, red-state Democrats.

◼ Senate Democrats Propose Law to Force Christians to Pay for Abortion Drugs - John McCormack/Weekly Standard

The chairman of the Ventura County, Calif., Democratic Central Committee celebrated the Fourth of July weekend by accusing Republicans of backing Nazis and discussing the size of conservative men’s genitals on Twitter.

◼ How the Ventura County Democratic Chair Spent His Fourth of July on Twitter - Washington Free Beacon

Atkins, an “online activist” who was elected to head the Ventura Democrats in 2012, spent the holiday marking America’s independence attacking Republicans as racists and backers of the Nazis during WWII.

“Do you have the freedom to vote without a poll tax or getting fire hosed because of your skin color? #ThankaDemocrat,” he tweeted....

On July 5, Atkins went after conservative men, saying they “generally know they can’t compete in a battle of wits or in the bedroom. Violence & superstitition [sic] is all they’ve got.”

“Conservative men are afraid that if women can have ‘consequence free sex’, their wives will leave & their daughters will disobey them. Good,” he tweeted.

Obama Tweets Passive-Aggressive Slap to Supreme Court for Ruling with Hobby Lobby.

◼ He's not happy, to say the least. - IJ Review

His Twitter account, which is run by his campaign team OFA, recently shared:

While this is distasteful, it is also inaccurate. Chicks on the Right sums it up:

You know who gets to make health decisions for women? Women. If women are not happy with the level of coverage their employer provides them, they get to decide whether or not they want to keep working for that employer. If women are not happy that their employer has different religious beliefs than they do, they get to decide to work for someone else.

But you know what many women don’t get to do? They don’t get to keep the doctors they were happy with before Obamacare. They don’t get to keep the health plans they were happy with before Obamacare. OBAMA is who took health decisions away from women.

Of course, if the government hadn’t tried to take over healthcare in the first place, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have had to rule on the Hobby Lobby case and open the subsequent can of worms that the President will surely be grumbling about in the future.

Ignore Fluke’s Scaremongering on Hobby Lobby Decision

◼ In a Washington Post op-ed published Monday, activist Sandra Fluke argues that the Supreme Court decision to allow Hobby Lobby to not offer four potentially abortion-inducing drugs and devices mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services means that potentially any company with any religious objections to any health-care treatment could win an exemption. - The Daily Signal

But let’s look at the facts. First, these drugs and devices are not “an uncontroversial form of care.” The four drugs that the Green and Hahn families objected to can end a new human being’s life. And there’s no question that abortion and potentially abortion-inducing drugs and devices is controversial....

Former NOW President Clueless About Hobby Lobby Coverage of 16 Forms of Contraception

◼ Last night former National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland made an appearance on Fox News' Hannity to discuss the Supreme Court's decision on Hobby Lobby earlier this week. When asked by Hannity how many forms of contraception Hobby Lobby offers employees, Ireland had no idea. The answer is: 16 different kinds. - Katie Pavlich/Townhall

The O'Reilly Factor with Megyn Kelly

◼ Megyn Kelly Stops By The ‘O’Reilly Factor’ To Destroy Sandra Fluke’s Hobby Lobby Argument - IJ Review

Megyn Kelly takes about 90 seconds to set Fluke straight on a common misunderstanding about the court ruling, explaining that birth control pills are still mandated, while emergency contraceptives (abortifacients) are not.

Three Biggest Lies Liberals Spread about the Hobby Lobby Ruling

◼ As predicted, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Co., and other family-owned businesses who filed against the contraceptive requirements provided in the HHS Mandate raised howls of outrage from the left. American women were being thrust back into the Dark Ages of 2009, yada yada yada. Many lefties took to Twitter to spew hate. - Newsbusters

Lie #1: Men are taking away women’s rights ... again! ...As Gabriel Malor of The Federalist wrote, “In the Bizarro World of the newspapers, not paying for someone else’s contraception is the same thing as prohibiting them from purchasing and using them themselves.”

Liberals seemed to miss the sticking point of this case: female employees of privately-owned businesses are not being forced to give up birth control; rather, the ruling gives business owners the right to not provide certain types of contraceptives in their insurance plan that they deem morally objectionable. Furthermore, businesses like Hobby Lobby already give their employees access to 16 different types of contraception in their employees health care plan. Which brings us to the next lie being spread by liberals on Twitter and elsewhere.

Lie #2: Conservatives are prudes who want to take away access to all contraception, which is a healthcare issue for many women.

Another argument making it’s rounds was that conservatives and religious organizations are trying to stop women from having sex, but that’s not the only reason women use contraception. While it is true that women use birth control for a variety of hormonal conditions, in this case Hobby Lobby already covered several different types of hormonal contraception, they were only objecting to 4 types of abortifacient pills, required under the HHS mandate. Hobby Lobby refused to pay for "morning after" abortion pills, not standard birth control.

Extreme feminist Amanda Marcotte who has compared getting an abortion to getting a cavity, retweeted classy lefty Twitter troll, “Religion is now only about unapproved fucking.”

More at the link

◼ Reminder: Hobby Lobby Provides Coverage for 16 Types of Contraception - Katie Pavlich/Townhall
◼ MRC's Brent Bozell Reacts to Hobby Lobby Decision - MRC
◼ Megyn Kelly Takes On Sandra Fluke [VIDEO] - Daily Caller
◼ Hobby Lobby, Liberty, Empathy, and Dignity - and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 - Weekly Standard

The #HobbyLobby Hysteria

◼ Years ago, while reporting on federally funded research — the infamous “porn arousal” studies at Northwestern University — I developed what I like to think of as the Existential Theory of Liberalism: To a liberal, nothing exists unless it is mandated, subsidized and/or regulated by the federal government. - The Other McCain

If you think it is a waste of taxpayer money to give a creepy psychology professor a federal grant to measure women’s sexual arousal to pornography, you will be condemned as “anti-sex.” If you want to reduce deficit spending by limiting tax money for the National Endowment of the Arts, you’re “anti-art.” Don’t agree with proposed EPA environmental regulations? You’re “anti-science.”

The reaction to today’s Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case — where a business objected, as a matter of religious liberty, to ObamaCare’s mandated insurance coverage for contraceptives — is a case in point: Liberals want us to believe that, unless businesses are compelled by federal law to provide contraception to their employees, contraception will cease to exist.

It's shocking how much the Left twisted this story. It's about freedom. Period.

◼ Days After Supreme Court Challenge, Hobby Lobby President Speaks Out [VIDEO] - Heritage

Hobby Lobby President Steve Green set the record straight about his company’s fight against the government over the controversial Obamacare mandate.

In an exclusive on-camera interview with The Foundry, Green said Hobby Lobby drew the line when the government required the company to provide life-ending drugs, free of charge, under the health law’s mandate.

Supreme Court Women Raise Questions on Contraception Coverage

◼ Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg aggressively questioned the corporate challengers who want exemptions from providing contraception under Obamacare at Tuesday's oral arguments. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties say the measure violates their religious freedoms - TIME (Image source/Nikki Kahn—The Washington Post/Getty Images)

The three women of the Supreme Court dominated questioning at the beginning of Tuesday’s oral arguments in a case pitting religious business owners against the new health care reform law’s mandate that employer-provided insurance cover contraceptive care.

The court case will determine whether Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft store chain, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet company, can be exempted from providing contraception coverage to female employees through federally mandated health insurance policies.

Supreme Court proceedings make for notoriously difficult and unreliable predictors of how justices might rule on a case. That said, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasted no time in pressing the corporate challengers...

DON'T LIKE IT, PAY THE TAX...
◼ Justices Impersonating Accountants - Smitty/The Other McCain

Related, via Hot Air Quotes of the Day:

“One religious group could opt out of this and one religious group could opt out of that, and everything would be piecemeal and nothing would be uniform,” Kagan warned. “Religious objectors would come out of the woodwork.”

In other words, kind of like the Amish, or Congress:

Along with eschewing cars and many other modern technologies, the descendants of 18th-Century German immigrants who practice the Amish and Old Order Mennonite religions, have effectively opted out of Obamacare, along with most federal safety net programs.
A little-known provision of the law with its roots in a 1950s battle over Social Security exempts these communities from the individual mandate, an element of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance in some form.

I guess Kagan’s point is to warn that our Balkanized system could get kinda fragmented, or something. WHY ARE WE PAYING THIS IDIOT?

◼ Supreme Court Women Come Out Swinging - CNS
Abortion fight haunts Obamacare...
◼ Health law penalizes 'wrong' insurance 18 times more than no insurance

Would President Obama prefer that you have health insurance of which he doesn’t approve, or no health insurance at all? Well, based on the penalties in play under his signature legislation, it would appear that he prefers for you to have no insurance at all than to have the “wrong” insurance (as defined, of course, by his administration).

As those who have been following the Hobby Lobby case—argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday—know, under Obamacare, the “wrong” kind of insurance includes policies that don’t provide “free” coverage of, among other things, the abortion drug ella, contraception, and sterilization (but only sterilization for women). (Coverage of cancer or heart disease—apparently being less essential—need not be “free.”)

◼ White House extends deadline AGAIN; To rely on 'honor system'
FLASHBACK: We Lack 'Statutory Authority' to Extend Deadline to Sign Up for Obamacare...
Nevada Navigators Convicted of Battery, Fraud, Criminal Endangerment...
TOP DEM POLLSTER: 'Don't defend it'...

[VIDEO] Ted Cruz makes surprise appearance, gives speech at Supreme Court in solidarity with Hobby Lobby

◼ [VIDEO] - (h/t: Caroline Pilgrim)/The Right Scoop

Ted Cruz gave a great speech today in a surprise appearance at the Supreme Court, supporting the cause of Hobby Lobby and reminding people of the importance of our God-given right of religious freedom and why it is protected in our Constitution. He also predicted that the Supreme Court would strike down the contraceptive mandate and rule in favor of Hobby Lobby.

Have You Been Following The Hobby Lobby Case? This Is How the Supreme Court Reacted Today. Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby.

◼ Hobby Lobby is facing potential fines of over $475 million a year because Obamacare violates their religious beliefs. We've been covering it from moment one. - Derrick Morgan, Hans von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery/THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

President Obama’s health care law made its way back to the Supreme Court of the United States today. In addition to being unsound health care policy by limiting patient choice and increasing costs, it also requires businesses to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. This morning, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, two challenges to the Obamacare mandate.

Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts chain owned by the Green family, who are evangelical Christians, with over 13,000 employees. Hobby Lobby would face potential fines of almost $475 million a year if they fail to comply with this mandate. Conestoga Wood Specialties is a kitchen cabinet manufacturer run by the Hahns, a Mennonite family, with almost 1,000 employees. It would face financial penalties of about $35 million per year. Along with more than 300 plaintiffs in over 90 lawsuits, the Green and Hahn families believe that complying with the Obamacare mandate would force them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.

The First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protect the free exercise of religion. Under RFRA, the government may not substantially burden the free exercise of religion unless it can show that the burden advances a compelling interest using the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. That’s a high bar. At issue in this case is whether these family businesses have religious liberty rights.

◼ Hobby Lobby case: Justices skeptical of White House position - POLITICO

The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed skepticism of the legality of the Obama administration’s refusal to accommodate for-profit companies’ religious objections to the Obamacare requirement that most firms provide contraception in their employee health plans.

A majority of the justices seemed particularly doubtful of one of the administration’s central legal claims: the assertion that for-profit companies have no religious rights under federal law.

During more than 90 minutes of arguments, several justices repeatedly questioned why the administration couldn’t give for-profit companies with religious objections the same kind of accommodation that has been offered to religious nonprofits. Those organizations have been offered the chance to opt-out of contraceptive coverage and have it provided through their insurance company or administrator.

◼ The oral argument in the Hobby Lobby religious freedom and contraception case. - Althouse

◼ SCOTUSblog and ◼ The Wall Street Journal have some detail to their coverage, but I'm going to read the transcript ◼ (PDF).

◼ Argument Follow-up In The Contraception Mandate Cases - Ace Of Spades
◼ Reviewing The Legal Arguments In The Contraception Mandate Cases - Ace Of Spades
◼ The Obamacare tax credit and subsidy case argued today in the shadow of Hobby Lobby - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion
◼ Sotomayor, Kagan: Hobby Lobby Should Drop Insurance, Pay Penalty and Let Employees Use Exchange - Penny Starr/CNS News

...“But isn't there another choice nobody talks about, which is paying the tax, which is a lot less than a penalty and a lot less than -- than the cost of health insurance at all?”...

◼ Ted Cruz, Veteran of 9 Supreme Court Arguments, Says First Amendment on Trial Today - Rob Bluey/Heritage The Foundry
◼ INFOGRAPHIC: What Exactly This Hobby Lobby Case Is About

Sandra Fluke goes with plan B

◼ Sandra Fluke decides against congressional run, goes with plan B - Daily Caller

Contraception activist Sandra Fluke has decided she will not be running for California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman’s soon-to-be vacated congressional seat.

◼ Sandra Fluke forgoes congressional bid to run for state Senate - LA Times
◼ Fluke opts for Plan B; ditches Congress bid for Calif. state Senate run - Washington Times
◼ Sandra Fluke Passes on U.S. House Bid, Aims for California State Senate - Mediaite

SOTOMAYOR DROPS BALL ON OBAMACARE...

◼ Four injunctions against the Obamacare contraceptive mandate yesterday - Thomas Lifson/American Thinker

Is this some kind of record? On the last day of 2013 four different federal appeals courts issued temporary injunctions against enforcement of the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals acted on two different cases, Michigan Catholic Conference v. Sebelius and The Catholic Diocese of Nashville et al v. Sebelius, while the DC Circuit Court of Appeals acted in The Catholic Archbishop of Washington et al v Sebelius. Meanwhile, no less than Obama-appointee Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction in the case of The Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, Denver, v Sebelius.

All in all, quite a way to kick off Obamacare.

◼ Halts Contraception Rule for Catholic Nuns... - Edvard Pettersson and Greg Stohr/Bloomberg
◼ Thankful Nuns Celebrate Sotomayor's Contraceptive Mandate Stay - Newsmax

Sotomayor's Tuesday ruling gave Roman Catholic Church-affiliated organizations temporary exemptions from a part of the Obamacare healthcare law that requires employers to provide insurance policies covering contraception.

She granted the temporary injunction to the Little Sisters of the Poor and Illinois-based Christian Brothers Services, plus related entities.

Sotomayor is giving the government until Friday morning to respond to her decision.

Federal Judge Calls Obamacare "Totally Ineffective" While Striking Down Contraception Mandate

◼ Yesterday, Judge Brian Cogan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, not only struck down Obamacare's contraception mandate as applied to religious non-profit organizations, but also sent a strong signal that federal courts were losing patience with President Obama's many stitches of executive power. - Conn Carroll/Washington Examiner @conncarroll

Previous courts had ruled against President Obama's contraception mandate as applied to for-profit entities (see Sebelius v Hobby Lobby), but this was the first court to hold that participating in Obama's scheme to provide free birth control is a substantial burden on the free practice of religion (specifically the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and its affiliate organizations).

The contraception mandate "directly compels plaintiffs, through the threat of onerous penalties, to undertake actions that their religion forbids," Cogan wrote. "There is no way that a court can, or should, determine that a coerced violation of conscience is of insufficient quantum to merit constitutional protection." ...

Second, the court also rejected Obama's last minute claim that Obamacare's contraception mandate, as implemented for religious organizations, did not, in fact, mandate contraception:

Here, the Government implicitly acknowledges that applying the Mandate to plaintiffs may in fact do nothing at all to expand contraceptive coverage, because plaintiffs’ TPAs aren’t actually required to do anything after receiving the self-certification. In other words, the Mandate forces plaintiffs to fill out a form which, though it violates their religious beliefs, may ultimately serve no purpose whatsoever. A law that is totally ineffective cannot serve a compelling interest.

Considering how often Obama has justified his expansion of executive power on Congress' failure to do his bidding, yesterday's ruling was not only a huge victory for religious liberty, but a huge win for limited government in all spheres as well.

A SLEAZY ad aimed at getting college co-eds to sign up for Obamacare seems to have backfired.

◼ Watch what college students think - CNS

It seems that most of the guys said they were fine with it.

The ladies, not so much:

"Sleazy"
"Creepy-looking"
"It belittles women."
"They're assuming that all of us would fall for a hot man like that, as if that is the most persuasive way to get us to buy insurance."
A few thought it was offensive because it portrayed the young woman as using the guy just for sex, and noted that it doesn't accurately explain why young people should buy health insurance.

"It seems like a satire made by people who are against Obamacare," one co-ed concluded.

BRANCO on 'HO-surance' ads

via conservativebyte.com