A screwed-up HealthCare.gov Web site isn’t the only ObamaCare glitch keeping Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius up at night.
There’s also the law’s increasingly troubled contraceptive mandate. At the beginning of the month, we noted the DC Circuit Court of Appeals had slapped it down, finding the mandate “trammels the right of free exercise of religion.”
Now another federal appeals court has weighed in. In a 2-to-1 decision, a Seventh Circuit panel has come down on the side of two businesses, one an Illinois-based construction company and the other an Indiana-based manufacturer.
As the panel notes, these companies face big penalties if they do not comply with an HHS mandate the owners say violates their religious beliefs — to the tune of $730,000 a year for the Illinois company, and $17 million a year for the Indiana one. What makes the ruling even more interesting is its holding that the companies and their owners are both protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
With this decision, three circuit courts have now upheld challenges to the mandate, against two that have ruled the other way. As Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center puts it: “It’s a very safe bet that the Supreme Court will grant review soon to address the fundamental questions of religious liberty that these cases present.”
Maybe then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right: It was probably too much to expect anyone to have read the more than 2,000 pages of the health-care bill before it passed. Still, you would think they might have at least read the First Amendment.