Even though Democrats like to say religious liberty is a cherished issue among the right, they’re consistently proving they too, have a fascination, albeit a morbid one, with the First Amendment.
In the war to uphold religious liberty, a few battles pop up over and over. One of these is the right for the Little Sisters of the Poor not to succumb to the government’s wishes for them to provide contraceptives. It’s not conservatives that have inserted themselves into the business of a private organization, compelling them to sell their souls or face 14 laborious lawsuits. Fourteen states, led at the helm by Democratic governors or attorneys general, who think that among the bevy of issues an attorney general must address is forcing nuns to provide people with birth control so women can have safe sex, as if it isn’t readily available in thousands of other places, should remain at the top of their to-do list.
On Thursday, the Little Sisters of the Poor will be in court, yet again, to ask for protection from a lawsuit by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit will hear arguments in California v. Little Sisters of the Poor and decide if California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington can force these nuns to provide birth control in their healthcare plan, even though the nuns believe in no such thing.
Of course, this issue has been addressed in the policy sphere as well as the court system. In 2017, following an executive order, the Little Sisters received a religious exemption that applies to nonprofit groups nationwide.
I’m tired of this. I’m tired of Democrats as a collective, 14-state army of progressive thought, standing on top of the ballast of free speech and free exercise (as well as several federal and state laws strengthening these) and demanding that somehow their freedoms usurp conservatives’ to the degree that they have the right to strongarm others into their inappropriate mandates. That somehow, because they don’t agree with the tenets of Catholicism, or with the fact that monuments are erected to honor and preserve Judeo-Christian ideals, these ideals should be trampled upon with reckless abandon via needless litigation.
As I’ve said on these pages before, a mandate forcing nuns to provide healthcare (let alone birth control) was unnecessary from the beginning — as is the gall of a swath of blue-state liberals who think they can win a war over who deserves to be protected under the First Amendment. Fortunately, that most important of amendment of all protects everyone equally.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
