The nuns' position here [refusing to sign a waiver required to invoke legal right, claiming it's a burden] is, to me, ridiculous ~ ~ Sooz

Here’s What’s Really At Stake In That Birth Control Case Involving The Colorado Nuns
By Ian Millhiser on January 3, 2014 at 2:00 pm

Late on New Year’s Eve, Justice Sonia Sotomayor handed down a very brief order holding that several religious groups could temporarily ignore the provisions of the Affordable Care Act relating to birth control. The order, which offers no rationale and appears to be nothing more than a routine action delaying a resolution of the case until the Justice Department had an opportunity to present its side of the case to the Court today, immediately became one of the most overblown stories of 2014. The order offers no hint about how Justice Sotomayor views the merits of this case, and it applies only to the few religious organizations before the court in this case. The overwhelming majority of American employers remain subject to the requirement that their employee health plans cover contraception.

Yet, while the significance of Sotomayor’s New Year’s Eve order should not be overstated, there’s an important legal issue lurking in this case that could give religious employers sweeping and unprecedented immunity from the law.

Unlike the Hobby Lobby case, where a business owned by people with religious objections to birth control is suing to avoid having to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees, there is no question in the Colorado case that the plaintiffs do not have to provide birth control to anyone. Every single one of the plaintiffs in the Colorado case qualify for a religious exemption to the birth control rules — indeed, the federal government admits as much.

In order to invoke that exemption, however, the plaintiffs need to fill out a form. That’s what the plaintiffs object to in this case. Not that they might be forced to provide medical care that goes against their personal beliefs, but that they have to inform the government that they wish to invoke their legal right by first filling out a form.

The reason why it matters that the plaintiffs in the case are claiming that such an insignificant requirement burdens their religious faith is because federal religious liberty law provides that “[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” except when a specific exemption applies. So a person with a religious objection the law cannot immunize themselves from following it merely because they don’t like the law, they have to show that the law imposes a burden on their faith that is substantial. That is why these plaintiffs should have no case. Being required to inform the government that you are invoking your legal rights isn’t a substantial burden. It’s barely a burden at all.

Should the Supreme Court side with the plaintiffs in this Colorado case, it will require the Court to effectively write the “substantially burden” requirement out of the law, a holding which could permit some truly absurd lawsuits. When the state of North Dakota considered a ballot initiative that would have enacted a similar rule in that state, we quipped that “even the most minor inconveniences to religious practices would be suspect under the initiative. A person who is running late to church could claim it is illegal to make them obey traffic lights.”

Combine this with the extreme deference some lower courts have shown to people with religious objections to the law, and the result is a radical shift away from requiring people with religious objections to the law to actually comply with it.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/01/03/3117691/stake-birth-control-case-involving-colorado-nuns/

Let's start taxing the drama queens. Then they will know what a true burden is...

I'm cynical enough to guess that the nuns are being "coached" by someone [other than their God] ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Thou shalt not do paperwork
01/06/14 09:18 AM
By Steve Benen

With a new contraception controversy pending at the Supreme Court, some in conservative media have suggested the Obama administration is going after a group of nuns. In an interesting twist, that’s largely the opposite of what’s happened.

As we discussed last week, a Colorado group of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, wants to provide health care coverage to its non-profit group’s employees, but doesn’t want to cover contraception. No problem, the Obama administration says, telling the group that it can simply fill out some paperwork noting a religious objection, at which point a private insurance company can create a separate policy for workers who want access to birth control. The non-profit group wouldn’t be involved, wouldn’t condone contraception, and wouldn’t pay a penny.

The nuns have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the paperwork itself infringes on their religious beliefs, too.

Yesterday, Mark Rienzi of Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who is lead counsel for the nuns, debated the issue with Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Hogue highlighted not only the accommodation that the policy already allows, but reminded viewers that even if the nuns do the paperwork, the group’s workers still wouldn’t get contraception given the Little Sisters of the Poor’s health plan, making the legal fight moot.


Rienzi wasn’t persuaded.


Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) insisted over the weekend that the White House is trying to “silence a group of nuns.” This case is about a group claiming a religious objection to paperwork – no one is trying to silence anyone.

Postscript: I’m admittedly not the first to suggest this, but I wonder whether the Little Sisters of the Poor would object if someone filled out the paperwork for them, in a Shabbas goy kind of situation.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/thou-shalt-not-do-paperwork

Postscript: I’m admittedly not the first to suggest this, but I wonder whether the Little Sisters of the Poor would object if someone filled out the paperwork for them, in a Shabbas goy kind of situation.

I laughed at that too, roseanne ~

Sooz

Same facts/different day ~ the nuns' position here [refusing to sign a waiver required to invoke legal right, claiming it's a burden] is, to me, STILL ridiculous ~ ~ Sooz

Friday, Jan 24, 2014 04:06 PM CST
Supreme Court grants Little Sisters temporary exemption from contraception mandate
"This order should not be construed as an expression of the Court’s views on the merits," according to the justices.
Katie Mcdonough

The Supreme Court late Friday granted the Little Sisters of the Poor a temporary exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.

While some may hail this as a victory for opponents of the mandate, the high court emphasized in its order that the action was not to be “construed as an expression of the Court’s views on the merits.”

The action is limited in its impact because the issue before the court was procedural — a matter of whether or not to issue the injunction. The merits of the case were never before the court. What the Friday action means is that the Little Sisters do not need to fill out the form indicating its objection to the mandate pending its appeal in federal court.

As Salon has previously noted, the Obama administration has created an exemption for religious nonprofits like the Little Sisters. In order to comply with the law, these organizations are simply required to fill out a form stating they object to the mandate and send that form to a third-party administrator, which will then provide and pay for the contraceptive coverage the groups will not provide.

At issue in the Little Sisters case is, put simply, whether or not filling out a form is a violation of the organization’s religious freedom.

The Little Sisters’ claim is especially rich because the organization uses a self-insured “church plan” to provide insurance for employees and would never have been compelled to provide contraceptive coverage in the first place.

As I’ve written before, the nuns’ employees are going to be deprived of comprehensive healthcare regardless of the outcome of the appeal.

The case will be decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which upheld the mandate in December.

More to come as the story develops.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/supreme_court_grants_little_sisters_temporary_exemption_from_contraception_mandate/