Liberty "a shield, not a sword"
A federal judge in Eastern Missouri has upheld the government mandate that insurance policies cover birth control. Judge Carol E. Jackson ruled that the mandate is not a violation of religious liberty. Religious freedom is “a shield, not a sword,” she said, and religious liberty claims cannot be used as a “means to force one’s religious practices upon others.” Her argument closely aligns with points that the Century made some months ago in an editorial and that I tried to make in a blog post.
Mark Silk notes that other courts are likely to reach different conclusions. The plaintiffs’ lawyers filed an appeal and voiced confidence that the judgment would be overturned. It may take a ruling by the Supreme Court to decide the issue.
It’s significant that the case decided by Jackson—Frank O’Brien et al. v. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services—involves a secular for-profit company, O’Brien Industrial Holdings, a mining operation. Other pending cases involve religious schools or other nonprofit agencies, and judges may well think those cases raise a different set of religious liberty issues.
