Led by the University of Notre Dame, several dozen Catholic religious schools and institutions filed lawsuits around the nation on Monday, taking aim at new regulations under the Obama health law that require most employers to provide birth control coverage in their health plans.
"This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, the President of Notre Dame.
Notre Dame's 57 page lawsuit filed in the state of Indiana starts with a simple proposition - if the federal government wants to expand birth control coverage, the federal government can do that, but not by forcing individual religious insitutions to go along.
"This lawsuit is about one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference," the Notre Dame lawsuit states.
"It is not about whether people have a right to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. Those services are, and will continue to be, freely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the Government itself from making them more widely available."
The lawsuits come at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is already weighing a legal challenge against the individual mandate that forces people to buy health insurance starting in 2014; a ruling on that is expected in the next six weeks.
The legal move won praise from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which evidently has been working behind the scenes with other groups to try and negotiate some resolution with the Obama Administration.
"We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress – and we’ll keep at it – but there's still no fix," said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.
"Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now. Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits, we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses, charities, hospitals and schools across the nation," Dolan added in a statement.
The issue cuts both ways politically - Democrats believe it energizes women voters and they have used it to accuse Republicans of waging a "war on women."
On the opposite side, Republicans believe it energizes more conservative voters who see this as an assault on religion by the government.
As I witnessed on the campaign trail, the mere mention of this issue at any event involving Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum brought a huge roar from the crowd - and those three candidates certainly drew from different constituencies within the Republican Party.
Take this link to read the Notre Dame lawsuit.
