ObamaCare Update: Catholic Lumberjacks Don’t Have To Pay For Birth Control

Courthouse News Service reports that Seneca Hardwood Lumber Co., of Cranberry, PA., is getting to proceed with its lawsuit against ObamaCare’s requirements that it cover contraception for its employees. The company is co-owned by Catholics—one of whom has 13 children—who have even built a chapel on the business premises, and who object to the requirement on religious grounds. They want to keep providing health insurance, however, also on religious grounds.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti granted the business’s request for an injunction against the requirement, saying the owners stand a chance of winning at trial. “Plaintiffs are faced with having to choose between violating their deeply held religious beliefs and being forced to cause SHLC … to terminate their health insurance coverage, which also burdens their religious exercise,” Conti wrote. Since the government is already providing contraception for free or reduced costs to employees of religious organizations, she wrote, there’s no need to force the lumber company owners to violate their religious conscience.