My fellow Mirror of Justice blawgger Rick Garnett blawgged an announcement of his NRO column Confine & Conquer, in which he opines:
Earlier this week, the supreme court of California announced that "Catholic Charities of Sacramento," although an "organ of the Roman Catholic Church," is not a "religious employer." Accordingly, that organization is required by California law to include prescription contraceptives in its employees' health-insurance plans, notwithstanding its claim and religious conviction that "it cannot offer insurance for prescription contraceptives without improperly facilitating...sin."
Given recent decisions and developments, the court's ruling in Catholic Charities of Sacramento, Inc., v. Superior Court of Sacramento County comes as no surprise. It is no less regrettable, though, and should be no less troubling, for being predictable. Indeed, Professor Douglas Laycock — one of the nation's leading constitutional-law scholars — has observed that the decision is a "shocking interference with internal church affairs." It presents, in the words of Justice Janice Rogers Brown, the court's lone dissenter, "an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization's expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission." The Catholic Charities case is not just another effort to navigate what Justice Brown called the "whimsical and somewhat erratic path" of religious-freedom jurisprudence. Rather, it involves an effort by government to define — and, thereby, to confine — the nature and scope of religious belief, obligation, and faith.If you care about religious liberty, this is a must read. Joe Carter's comments on the same opinion, by the way, would be a winner in Kate's snark hunt:
No word yet on how the charity will respond but in all likelihood they will simply have to drop their prescription drug coverage. Then again they could simply ignore the law altogether. That approach appears to be working in San Francisco.
