Updated 01/02: Federal district court judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff issued an injunction against the contraceptive mandate for Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan Sunday, just two days before Monaghan would have begun to face fines for failing to comply.
“Plaintiff has shown that abiding by the mandate will substantially burden his exercise of religion,” Zatkoff wrote in his opinion. “The government has failed to satisfy its burden of showing that its actions were narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest.”
Domino’s Pizza founder and former owner Tom Monaghan has joined the ever-growing list of lawsuits against the federal government’s contraceptive mandate.
On behalf of Domino’s Farms, Monaghan filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Affordable Care Act (ACA) last week. The suit argues that the ACA mandate for employer-provided contraceptives is “gravely immoral” and runs counter to Monaghan’s closely head Catholic beliefs.
Monaghan no longer owns Domino’s Pizza, but remains known for his Catholic philanthropy and for founding Ave Maria University, a Catholic college in Florida that already has filed suit over the mandate.
CT has regularly covered the many lawsuits against the HHS by evangelical and Catholic plaintiffs.
