Do You Have to Check Your Religion at the Door of Your Own Business?
Do you have to check your religion at the door of your own business?
That is the question Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) submitted to the Supreme Court on Thursday. On behalf of Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, ADF and allied attorneys Randall Wenger and Charles Proctor have filed a Supreme Court petition to challenge a ruling on Obamacare’s abortion-pill mandate.
The Hahn family, which owns the company, comprises devout Mennonite Christians whose father founded a kitchen cabinet-making company nearly 50 years ago. They are peaceful and hardworking people who have built a successful American business that employs hundreds of people.
Norman Hahn and his wife and children never imagined they would have to go to court just to stop the federal government from forcing them to pay for insurance that covers the destruction of human life.
The United States was founded by people seeking the freedom to practice their faith in their everyday lives. But today’s federal government says that freedom of religion is, by definition, excluded when you earn a living for your family in business.
It would surely come as a shock to the pilgrims founding the American colonies that the government could force them to destroy human life in their daily business activities, on the theory that their religion could be freely practiced only in houses of worship.
Yet that is exactly what the federal government is claiming through Obamacare, when it mandates that employers include early abortion-inducing items and contraception in health insurance even when the families owning those businesses object.
Until now, most courts in America recognized that religious freedom includes what you do in your daily life, including in your business. But the appeals court in Philadelphia rejected the Hahns’ religious freedom claim, insisting that because their business is incorporated, they cannot even allege they exercise religion in their family company.
The Conestoga case represents a threat to everyone’s religious freedom. If corporations can’t exercise religion, even religious schools and churches might find themselves being told they can’t practice their faith because they are incorporated.
The New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union and Starbucks are all corporations, and they all promote ideological agendas. No one believes they don’t have First Amendment rights. The Hahn family has just as much a claim to their First Amendment rights.
Only the Supreme Court can fix these rulings against religious freedom that have been spawned by Obamacare. The federal government has no business deciding that faith cannot be exercised in vast areas of human life like business, health care and education. In America, religious freedom must be respected in all areas of life.
