News & Reporting

Just hours after the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision for Hobby Lobby and fewer than 24 before the IRS could fine several corporations for HHS mandate violations, federal circuit courts granted last minute relief to Wheaton College and six Catholic organizations, including a television network, a college, and a children's home.

At least 50 cases involving nonprofit organizations, many of which had been on hold, should be affected by the Supreme Court's narrow decision to side with Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties in the debate over whether they should be required to pay for some forms of birth control that are possible abortifacients, according to the Becket Fund. A total of one hundred cases, involving both nonprofit and for-profit firms, have challenged the HHS mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 employees to provide health care insurance including 20 kinds of contraception.

Some cases ask for broader exceptions than Hobby Lobby and Conestoga did. For instance, the court document granting an injunction to the Catholic Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) notes that "The Network refuses to provide, subsidize, or support health insurance that in any way encourages the use of artificial contraception, sterilization, or abortion, all of which it considers 'grave sin.'"

"Just as the for-profit company known as the New York Times enjoys the right to freedom of the press under the First Amendment, so Hobby Lobby enjoys the right to religious freedom protected by RFRA," says Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. "Protection for religious liberty doesn't stop where commerce begins."

Wheaton and the Catholic organizations — EWTN, Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne, Catholic Charities of Wyoming, St. Joseph's Children's Home, St. Anthony Tri-Parish Catholic School, and Wyoming Catholic College — are all protected with temporary injunctions ...

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