Legal action contends 'Obamacare' mandate violates business owners' religious beliefs 

Citing “religious objection,” Hobby Lobby and its sister company, Mardel Christian & Education, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a mandate in the nation’s health care overhaul law that requires employers to provide coverage for the “morning-after,” abortion-inducing pill and similar drugs.

Filed Sept. 12 in U.S. District Court for the Western Division of Oklahoma, the suit by the Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby chain claims the government mandate is forcing the company’s owners “to violate their deeply held religious beliefs under threat of heavy fines, penalties and lawsuits.” Failure to provide the drugs in the company’s health insurance plan could lead to fines of up to $1.3 million a day, the company said.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare” as constitutional. Formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare includes a “preventive services” mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which forces businesses to provide the morning-after and “week-after” pills—without co-pay—in their health insurance plans.

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder, said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

Green's son, Mart Green, is president of Mardel, and several of his grandchildren also work in the Christian retail chain that operates 35 stores in seven states and has 372 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby is self-insured and will be required to comply with the mandate by Jan. 1, the start of its health insurance plan year.

“We are confident that the court will act quickly,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., which represents Hobby Lobby. “This mandate violates the religious liberty of millions of Americans. The government has turned a deaf ear to the rights of business owners.”

Duncan told Christian Retailing that the government has delayed implementing the mandate for nonprofits for a year, but not so for business owners.

“This mandate is a problem for Christian business owners,” he said. “We hope other Christian retail chains besides Mardel will follow suit. The mandate goes into effect very soon. It's an urgent issue.”

Duncan said the lawsuit does not challenge the rules regarding a variety of other birth-control measures. He added that 27 other lawsuits have been filed nationwide regarding the mandate, mostly by nonprofit groups.

Hobby Lobby is the largest and only non-Catholic-owned business to file suit against the HHS mandate that forces all companies, regardless of religious conviction, to provide coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, Associated Press reported.

“The Green family’s religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in or otherwise supporting abortion-causing drugs and devices,” the lawsuit stated.

It also said the family has “a sincere religious objection” to providing coverage for certain kinds of intrauterine devices and alleges they can cause the death of an embryo by preventing it from implanting in the wall of a woman’s uterus.

Besides Hobby Lobby, Becket Fund also represents several nonprofits in the HHS mandate suit, including Wheaton College, Geneva College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network and Ave Maria University.

Hobby Lobby operates more than 500 stores in 41 states and employs more than 13,000 full-time employees.

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