The College Fix

Religious freedom advocates are reeling after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that religious nonprofits – including Christian colleges and nuns – must help their employees get contraceptives including abortion pills.

Though that “help” is simply telling the government the nonprofits won’t pay for the coverage, the very act of notifying the government triggers the provision of those contraceptives to employees by the insurance company under Obamacare.

Catholic News Service reports that the Colorado-based court said the groups weren’t “substantially burdened” by the act of “self-certifying”:

“The departments have made opting out of the mandate at least as easy as obtaining a parade permit, filing a simple tax form, or registering to vote — in other words, a routine, brief administrative task,” wrote Judge Scott M. Matheson Jr. He was joined by two other judges in parts of the ruling. However, Judge Bobby Baldock dissented from the majority’s decision that self-insured nonprofit religious employers are no more substantially burdened than those with other types of insurance.

The majority opinion said it wasn’t trampling on Supreme Court precedent:

Matheson’s ruling took into account the Supreme Court’s June 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, which found that the owners of the for-profit chain of crafts stores had a legitimate claim that their religious beliefs are burdened by the mandate for contraceptive insurance. …

Matheson said that unlike in the Hobby Lobby case, the federal government had provided a process of accommodating the plaintiffs’ religious objections to the requirement for contraceptive coverage.

The accommodation makes the situation unlike typical cases brought under RFRA, he said. In Hobby Lobby and other recent RFRA cases, “the government either required or prohibited acts of religious significance to the plaintiffs. In the cases before us, the government has freed plaintiffs from the responsibility to perform the act they consider religiously objectionable — namely, providing contraceptive coverage.

Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented some of the colleges, blasted the ruling. Senior counsel Gregory Baylor said the group was considering options for appeal in a press release:

All Americans should oppose unjust laws that force people – under threat of punishment – to give up their fundamental freedoms in order to provide health plans the government prefers. It’s no different for these Christian colleges, which simply want to abide by the very faith they espouse and teach. The court is wrong to punish people of faith for making decisions consistent with that faith.

Read the ruling and the story.

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