Supreme Court Heads Into a New Term

Abortion, public prayer and HHS mandate cases are under review.

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by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND10/09/2013
National Catholic Register

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court is diving into a new term, with several cases threatening court precedents dealing with abortion and public prayer.

Church leaders and religious-freedom advocates are also waiting to see whether the high court will agree to hear one or more appeals in legal challenges to the Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate filed by for-profit employers who oppose the federal law on moral grounds.
While the justices are not slated to hear blockbuster cases like recent challenges to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, or the federal Defense of Marriage Act, The Washington Post noted that the high court has increasingly become the “uneasy arbiter of America’s intractable social conflicts.”

Indeed, for John Kennedy, the Catholic CEO of Autocam, a Michigan-based manufacturing company and one of 30 for-profit employers who have sued Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the federal contraception mandate, the high court now offers his last hope, after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him.

“The 6th Circuit said I could only practice my faith within the four walls of my church. I hope the Supreme Court agrees to a review of the HHS mandate and it recognizes that the law impinges on the religious freedom of all business owners who don’t believe in birth control and abortion-inducing drugs,” Kennedy told the Register, after he wrote an op-ed for USA Today outlining his objections to the federal law.

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