When do the reli­gious rights of an orga­ni­za­tion over­ride the reli­gious rights of an indi­vid­ual? Does the health of an employee take sec­ond place to the reli­gious or polit­i­cal pref­er­ences of an employer? If cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple for the pur­poses of polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions, are they also peo­ple for pur­poses of reli­gious observance?

A num­ber of Catholic orga­ni­za­tions are suing the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion over con­tra­cep­tion, claim­ing that new rules under the Afford­able Care Act vio­late the reli­gious rights of those orga­ni­za­tions. This is an exten­sion of the flap start­ing last Feb­ru­ary, when the Health and Human Ser­vices depart­ment pro­posed that employer-​​provided health care must cover con­tra­cep­tive ser­vices. The Catholic Church objected, insist­ing that pro­vid­ing such ser­vices is con­trary to Church doc­trine, and that, there­fore, Catholic orga­ni­za­tions which employ peo­ple must be exempted. This led to over­in­flated rhetoric from the right about the Administration’s “war on reli­gion.”

HHS responded with a com­pro­mise, requir­ing instead only that the insur­ance com­pa­nies, not the employ­ers, would be sub­ject to this rule. This would pro­vide proper and ade­quate health choices for women, while respect­ing the doc­tri­nal dic­tates of the Church. That wasn’t good enough for Catholic Bish­ops, though many other Catholic orga­ni­za­tions praised the move. The issue refuses to go away. (more…)