Townhall's Conn Carroll is reporting on the ruling handed down on Monday by Brooklyn federal judge Brian Cogan who sided with several Catholic entities in New York in their suit against the mandate. Not only was Cogan the first to declare that the mandate posed a substantial burden on the free practice of religion, but he also issued a permanent injunction that frees the Archdiocese and several other institutions from ever having to submit to the law.
The plaintiffs benefiting from the permanent injunction are Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, Monsignor Farrell High School on Staten Island, the ArchCare healthcare group and Catholic Health Services of Long Island. The Archdioceses of Rockville Centre and New York, which are also plaintiffs to the suit, are already exempt from the contraceptive care requirement as religious institutions.
What makes Cogan's rulling significant is his rejection of several key defenses used by the Obama administration. For instance, the government is arguing that everyone has to provide free contraceptive coverage because there is a compelling interest in the uniform enforcement of the mandate.
Cogan saw straight through this argument, citing the "tens of millions of people" who have already been exempted from the mandate via grandfathered health plans, small businesses and other religious employers who qualify for the extremely narrow exemption.
"Millions of women thus will not receive contraceptive coverage without cost-sharing through the Mandate," Cogan ruled. "Having granted so many exemptions already, the Government cannot show a compelling interest in denying one to these plaintiffs."
Cogan also rejected the last-minute claim of the administration that the contraception mandate as implemented for religious institutions doesn't really mandate contraception.
"Here, the Government implicitly acknowledges that applying the Mandate to plaintiffs may in fact do nothing at all to expand contraceptive coverage, because plaintiffs’ TPAs [third party administrators] aren’t actually required to do anything after receiving the self-certification," Cogan responsds. "In other words, the Mandate forces plaintiffs to fill out a form which, though it violates their religious beliefs, may ultimately serve no purpose whatsoever. A law that is totally ineffective cannot serve a compelling interest."
He also let the government know what he thought about their last-minute "realization" that the mandate doesn't really force anyone to provide contraception.
"The Government’s belated 'realization' that the challenged regulations may not actually result in the provision of contraceptive coverage to plaintiffs’ employees is difficult to fathom. . . . It is unclear how citizens like plaintiffs . . . are supposed to know what the law requires of them if the Government itself is unsure. After almost 18 months of litigation, defendants now effectively concede that the regulatory tale told by the Government was a non-sequitur."
The administration also tried to argue that the mandate only requires a religious organization to fill out a form designating the third party administrator who would provide the coverage. This isn't a big deal, they argued, because it's just an administrative task.
Cogan didn't buy this argument either. "There is no way that a court can, or should, determine that a coerced violation of conscience is of insufficient quantum to merit constitutional protection."
The Archdiocese of New York was pleased with the ruling.
“It is noteworthy that, with this decision, the Court has recognized that the Archdiocese of New York and other plaintiffs in this case are facing current and imminent harm from the government's contraception coverage mandate," said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese, in a statement released after the ruling.
Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told the National Catholic Register that he welcomed Judge Cogan’s decision and said it would strengthen an upcoming appeal at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by Belmont Abbey College and Wheaton College.
“The judge characterized the mandate as a ‘speeding train’ headed toward these organizations," Duncan said.
"It is the first judicial opinion to recognize what the religious plaintiffs have been arguing all along: The government’s so-called ‘accommodation’ and ‘safe harbor’ extension don’t alter the fact that the mandate is coming down the road and will hit these organizations soon.”
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