Obama's feud with nuns goes to Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday, Nov. 6, 2015, that it will rule on the Obama administration’s abortion-pill mandate for certain nonprofit organizations. The Little Sisters of the Poor, shown here, object to the mandate.

Catholic nuns with The Little Sisters of the Poor will have their day before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The high court agreed Friday to hear from seven nonprofit organization challenging the Affordable Care Act's mandate to provide abortifacients and contraceptives to employees. The White House insists "accommodation" has already been made by allowing groups to shift the requirement onto insurance companies.

"It is all well and good for HHS to think it has threaded the needle and found a way for re­li­gious non­profits to com­ply with the man­date without vi­ol­at­ing their re­li­gious be­liefs, but ul­ti­mately it is for the re­li­gious ad­her­ent to de­term­ine how much fa­cil­it­a­tion or com­pli­city is too much," the Little Sis­ters said a brief to the high court, National Journal reported Friday.

The Obama administration argues its "accommodation" honors the Re­li­gious Free­dom Res­tor­a­tion Act. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, said "compelling the participation" of religious nonprofits to take part in the mandate process "by threat of severe monetary penalty" was a substantial burden on their exercise of religion, CNN reported Oct. 30.

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Religious groups like he Little Sisters of the Poor face up to tens of millions of dollars in IRS fines for not complying with the Obamacare mandate. The Little Sisters of the Poor is an international Catholic institute that cares for the elderly. The Sisters consider it a sin to provide their employees health coverage for contraceptives (including drugs classified by the FDA as abortion-inducing) as required under Obamacare, and they want the same kind of exemption given to churches.

But the Sisters, as neither a corporation nor a church, are in the same legal limbo as thousands of religious schools and colleges, charities and hospitals. Those groups have filed dozens of lawsuits.

The Eight Circuit was the only lower court of seven that sided against the federal government.

This is the fourth time the Supreme Court has taken a case involving Obamacare, and the second related to its contraceptive mandate. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was decided by a 5-4 vote 16 months ago. The justices ruled in favor of for-profit companies with religious objections to the contraceptive mandate.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the nuns, argues the federal government, "has put them to the impossible choice of either violating the law or violating the faith upon which their lives and ministry are based," USA Today reported Friday.

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"The Little Sisters spend their lives taking care of the elderly poor – that is work our government should applaud, not punish,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, in a statement released Friday. "The Little Sisters should not have to fight their own government to get an exemption it has already given to thousands of other employers, including Exxon, Pepsi Cola Bottling Company, and Boeing. Nor should the government be allowed to say that the Sisters aren’t 'religious enough' to merit the exemption that churches and other religious ministries have received."

Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.