Appeals Court Upholds The Rights Of Individuals And Companies To Challenge The HHS Mandate

Good news from the front! Remember the lawsuit Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, Inc. filed last year? Mark them down has having won a nice little victory against the HHS Mandate. Lifenews has the scoop.

The HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare was dealt another blow on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled the Obama administration cannot force a family-run business in Illinois to comply with it and pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs for its employees.

This ruling comes after another victory against the mandate earlier this month.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a pro-life legal organization, informed LifeNews today that a decision by a federal appeals court that clears the way for the ObamaCare HHS Mandate to be put on hold represents a “significant victory for protecting the religious beliefs of individuals and corporations.”

In a 2-1 decision issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the court reversed the federal district court’s denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction and remanded the case for the district court to enter the preliminary injunction. The appeals court upheld the rights of both individuals and companies to challenge the ObamaCare HHS Mandate – the first decision of its kind in the ongoing HHS Mandate litigation.

“This is a significant victory for protecting the religious beliefs of individuals and corporations,” said Edward White, Senior Counsel of the ACLJ who represents the Illinois company.

Read more.

The American Center of Law & Justice has all 154 pages of the opinion over at their website.  Here’s a snip,

“We hold that the plaintiffs – the business owners and their companies – may challenge the mandate. We further hold that compelling them to cover these services substantially burdens their religious exercise rights. Under RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) the government must justify the burden under the standard of strict scrutiny. So far it has not done so, and we doubt that it can. Because the RFRA claims are very likely to succeed and the balance of harms favors protecting the religious-liberty rights of the plaintiffs, we reverse and remand with instructions to enter preliminary injunctions.”

More and more, the Administration’s trampling of religious liberty is being exposed for what it truly is: an untenable overreach that is unprecedented, and unconstitutional.