On Monday, the Supreme Court handed a massive victory to Catholic and Anglican nuns located in New York, ordering courts to take a second pass at a case that would force the sisters, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches, and other faith-based social ministries to provide payment for employee abortions.
In other words, the courts were attempting to infringe on the religious freedom of these organizations in order to further push for the development of our current culture of death in this country. To call this appalling is an understatement. It’s demonic.
The case in question, “Diocese of Albany v. Harris,” involved nuns and fellow plaintiffs filing a lawsuit against New York over a requirement in 2017.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty says, “When the New York State Department of Financial Services initially proposed the abortion mandate for health care plans, it promised to exempt all employers with religious objections. But after facing pressure from abortion activists, New York narrowed the exemption to cover only religious groups that primarily teach religion and primarily serve and hire those who share their faith.”
According to The Daily Wire, the New York courts decided to uphold the mandate. The Becket and Jones Day firms then responded by appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court. Several years later, in 2021, the highest court in the land reversed the decision and told the courts to reconsider the case after Becket took the victory in “Fulton v. City of Philadelphia.
The state courts fired back by claiming the Fulton case ruling was not applicable to the Diocese case.
Then, last week, Becket won a unanimous victory in Catholic Charities Bureau v.Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. That case involved the court ruling in favor of a Catholic charity that sued the state of Wisconsin after it was forced to pay certain unemployment taxes while other religious organizations were exempted. That ruling led to the court’s decision to remand the Diocese decision back to the New York Court of Appeals.
“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted,” the Supreme Court said. “The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals for New York for further consideration in light of Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Comm’n.”
“New York wants to browbeat nuns into paying for abortions for the great crime of serving all those in need,” Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, explained. “For the second time in four years, the Supreme Court has made clear that bully tactics like these have no place in our nation or our law. We are confident that these religious groups will finally be able to care for the most vulnerable consistent with their beliefs.”
Chalk up another big win for religious freedom.
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