Catholic Online Forum

The Catholic family that owns a Colorado-based company won a court victory in their battle to stop the Obama administration from requiring them to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception, a mandate they say violates their religious beliefs and First Amendment rights.

Hercules Industries, a Denver-based heating ventilation and air conditioning manufacturer that employs nearly 300 full-time workers, got an injunction in federal court which stops enforcement of the controversial ObamaCare mandate. The company's lawyers said they needed the injunction immediately because if the mandate is enforced, it must begin immediately making changes to its health plan, which renews on Nov. 1.

The case is similar to ones brought by Catholic-based colleges that have refused to provide employee insurance with such coverage, except this time, it is a secular corporation.
In his order, Senior Judge John L. Kane of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado said that the government’s arguments “are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion."

The case still must be aired out in court, but lawyers representing Hercules savored the temporary victory.

but it's stillgood news

...the Free Birth Control Rule is doomed as applied against religious objectors because they are protected by a federal statute known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” meaning the Constitution need not be applied. And sure enough, the judge avoided the constitutional issue, stating that the law RFRA requires a compelling state interest “in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened.”

The judge ruled that the state had not met its burden, and in a rich irony, based his decision in part upon the many exemptions already provided for various entities under Obamacare!

To make such a showing, however, the government must “offer evidence that granting the requested religious accommodations would seriously compromise its ability to administer this program.”… Any such argument is undermined by the existence of numerous exemptions to the preventive care coverage mandate. In promulgating the preventive care coverage mandate, Congress created significant exemptions for small employers and grandfathered health plans… Even Defendants created a regulatory exemption to the contraception mandate…(exempting certain religious employers from the contraception requirement of the preventive care coverage mandate).

Isn't President Obama's reelection a compelling state interest?

Hercules Industries, a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning manufacturer which employs 300 workers and has been in business in the Mile-High City for 50 years, was to be honored with a “Good Citizenship Award." The laurel was in recognition of contributions to the community, including the historic restoration of company headquarters and, ironically, its “generous employee health care coverage.”

But the award was taken away after the owners of Hercules Industries, the Newland family, won the court injunction which said that they did not have to start providing employees with coverage that included abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. As with several companies and colleges around the nation, the family that runs Hercules claimed that the mandates force them to violate their own religious beliefs.

Hercules Industries owner Bill Newland told Fox News Channel he thought his company was being targeted for standing up to the Obama Administration.

“The power of politicians should not be used for partisan retribution," Newland said. "The merits of Hercules [Industries] should stand on their own. This proclamation acknowledges our success and should of gone forward, but it didn’t for their personal reasons and their own beliefs.”

DENVER, September 26, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A judge’s order will not stop the Obama administration from pressing forward in its quest to punish a Catholic family’s business for refusing to comply with the HHS mandate.

Hercules Industries, an HVAC business in Denver, won an injunction against the controversial provision requiring employers to cover contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs in its health care plans on July 27.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department appealed the ruling to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in Denver.

“On the same day President Obama spoke of religious freedom at United Nations, his Justice Department acted to deny that freedom to small business owners,” said Maureen Ferguson and Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.

(Reuters) – A Catholic-owned family business in Michigan does not have to comply with the provision of the new U.S. healthcare law that requires private employers to provide employees with health insurance that covers birth control, a federal judge in Detroit has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland, in a ruling late Wednesday, temporarily blocked the government from forcing the owner of Weingartz Supply Company, which sells outdoor power equipment, to include contraception in its health coverage of employees.

The ruling only affects the company’s Catholic proprietor, Daniel Weingartz, and the approximately 170 people who work for him. But it opens the door for other firms to seek relief on religious grounds.