Religious Conservatives Notch Victories At Supreme Court On Birth Control Mandate, Bias Suits by Kevin Daley for Free Beacon
Social conservatives notched a pair of victories at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the justices sided with parochial schools and an order of Catholic nuns seeking exemptions from job bias lawsuits and the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate.
The first case involved a challenge to the Trump administration’s expansive conscience exemptions to a rule requiring that employers provide contraceptive coverage at no cost. The second case asked whether religion teachers at parochial schools are covered by the First Amendment’s “ministerial exception.” The bottomline judgment in both disputes was 7-2, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent.
The Trump administration’s victory in the ACA case in particular represents the fulfillment of a campaign pledge to religious conservatives. The president promised to enact an array of protections for houses of worship and faith-based employers, and the wide-ranging exemption to the contraception mandate was the watershed of those efforts. The administration’s policy has been dogged by legal challenges, however.
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“My hope is that now we can move on toward an American public square in which we can have moral and doctrinal debates without seeking to force people into choosing between their deepest held convictions and the callings of service to which those convictions lead,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Wednesday’s decisions follow a landmark victory for LGBT rights in June, which commanded votes from two Republican-appointed justices. The ruling, which has far-reaching consequences for divisive social questions, left many religious conservatives embittered and came as surveys show President Trump’s support among evangelical voters dipping. Wednesday’s cases seem to show the rough outlines of a would-be culture war settlement, in which the justices recognize protections for religious liberty in tandem with progressive victories in related areas like abortion or trans access to women’s sports.
