A Roman Catholic health care service company based in Illinois won a preliminary injunction against the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate, a ruling that represents a major victory for religious liberty and yet another setback for the president’s embattled rule.
The Thomas More Society, a not-for-profit law firm, is reporting that late last week, the Triune Health Group, Inc., a Roman Catholic health care service company based in DuPage County, Illinois, won a preliminary injunction against the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services mandate for group insurance coverage of sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception.
Triune, recently named by Crain’s Chicago Business as the Best Place to Work for Women in the Chicago metro area, will be permitted to offer its employees a healthcare plan without having to violate its leaders’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
“This is a major victory for our clients and for the cause of religious liberty,” said Kevin Edward White, board member and legal counsel for Chicago’s Thomas More Society, which represents Triune together with Sam Casey and Bart Waxman, Esqs., of the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project, based in Washington, D.C.
“An oppressive, unconstitutional burden has been temporarily lifted from the shoulders of Christopher and Mary Anne Yep that allows them to continue to practice their Roman Catholic faith and operate their company in a manner that they deem faithful to their conscientious religious beliefs.”
The preliminary injunction was granted by Judge Amy J. St. Eve in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Judge St. Eve wrote in her order that “the Seventh Circuit concluded that the Korte [Korte et al. v. Sebelius et al.,] plaintiffs established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm, with the balance of harms tipping in their favor. In light of this binding precedent, the court grants Triune’s motion for a preliminary injunction.”
In Triune’s request for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs Christopher and Mary Anne Yep urged the court to grant them relief lest they face the untenable choice “either … to comply with the federal mandate’s requirements in violation of their religious beliefs, or pay ruinous fines that would have a crippling impact on their business and force them to shut down.”
This injunction comes on the heels of recent rulings by other federal courts granting relief to some owners of private firms who protested that the Obamacare HHS mandate would force them to violate their religious beliefs, while refusing comparable relief to others, such as the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby, subjecting them to potentially crippling fines of approximately $1.3 million per day beginning January 1, 2013.
