High court to address HHS mandate on abortifacient drugs

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, a landmark case addressing the rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their religious convictions. 

The nation’s highest court accepted the federal government’s appeal of a June decision by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals that a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate to provide potentially life-terminating contraceptive drugs and devices in employee insurance plans places a substantial burden on the religious freedoms of Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel Christian & Education stores, which are solely owned by founder David Green and his family.

“This is a major step for the Greens and their family businesses in an important fight for Americans’ religious liberty,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that religious freedom in our country should be protected for family business owners like the Greens.” 

In July, a lower federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction preventing the government from enforcing the HHS mandate requiring family businesses to provide in the employee health insurance plan two drugs and two devices that are abortifacient.

The Greens and their family businesses—who have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the mandate—then took the unusual step in October of joining the government in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, despite the family’s Tenth Circuit victory.

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO. “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

The case will be argued and decided before the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June.

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