For-profit employers have right to religious freedom, attorney says

A lawyer challenging the Obama administration's contraception mandate said that employers should not be forced to compromise religious beliefs in order to run a for-profit company.

"The idea that just because you open a business, you leave your religion at the door is not supported by anything in our law," said Francis J. Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.

Manion told EWTN News on Aug. 23 that while it is common to see employers in America separating their religious beliefs from their business practices, they are not required to do so.

The Supreme Court and other U.S. courts have consistently recognized corporations as persons with "the same rights as anyone else," he explained.

In defending the controversial federal contraception mandate, the Obama administration has argued that "for-profit, secular employers generally...do not engage in any exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment."

But Manion pointed to the landmark 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech.

This ruling was consistent with 100 years of precedent in America, Manion said, and if corporations have a right to free speech, they should also have a right to religious freedom, which is also protected and given a position of priority in the First Amendment.

Manion is currently involved in defending a for-profit company from the contraception mandate, which requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs even if doing so violates their consciences.

While the administration has suggested preliminary plans for an "accommodation" for religious organizations that object to the mandate, religious individuals running "for-profit, secular" businesses would not qualify for it.

The American Center for Law and Justice is representing Frank R. O'Brien and the company that he chairs, O'Brien Industrial Holdings, LLC. Based in St. Louis, Mo., the holding company operates numerous businesses that explore, mine and process refractory and ceramic raw materials.

O'Brien - who employs 87 people - says that his Catholic beliefs have played an important role in shaping his business from the very beginning. He objects to the mandate because it requires him to violate his religious convictions.

The mandate applies to non-exempt businesses as soon as they begin or renew an annual health insurance plan. In O'Brien's case, a new health care policy would need to be in place by Jan. 1, 2013.

The American Center for Law and Justice had initially filed a federal lawsuit challenging the mandate on behalf of O'Brien in March, Manion explained. But as the months passed and the Jan. 1 deadline approached, "we just didn't think we could wait much longer."

So on Aug. 23, the law center asked a federal judge to grant a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the mandate from being enforced against O'Brien while his case goes through the courts.

On July 27, a federal judge granted an injunction to a Colorado-based manufacturer whose owners also have religious objections to the regulation. Manion said the fact that this injunction was "so easily granted" is "encouraging." He hopes to receive a timely hearing and decision for O'Brien as well.

In a statement announcing the motion for an injunction, he warned that without action, O'Brien will soon be forced to either "abandon his business, or abandon his beliefs."

Manion called the mandate both "unconstitutional" and "unfair," pointing to the tens of thousands of employers that the government has chosen to exempt from its requirements for other reasons.

He told EWTN News that the government has no right to decide that the religious liberty of individuals disappears when they become employers.

To suggest that freedom of religion is somehow limited to a private matter within one's home, church or synagogue is "completely contrary to what the founders intended," he explained.

Rather, he said, the free exercise of religion that is protected in the First Amendment includes "the practice of religion and what you do when motivated by religious beliefs."

Read more: http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=6036#ixzz24TNnGFIP

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