The U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear a challenge to Obamas' law brought by employers who wish to omit certain contraceptives from company health insurance policies for religious reasons.
The legal team backing one of the employers believes a 1993 law introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., could hand them a win.
Schumer, at the time a congressman, introduced the legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to reverse the effects of the Supreme Court's 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision. The court had decided an American Indian man who took peyote lacked a constitutional right to violate federal drug law.
Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic, said in the court's majority opinion that liberally exempting religious objectors from laws "would be courting anarchy."
"Danger increases in direct proportion to the society's diversity of religious beliefs," Scalia warned. "The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind." Scalia also noted: "Judging the centrality of different religious practices is akin to the unacceptable 'business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims.'"
The Schumer-introduced bill responded to Scalia's opinion by declaring the government "shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion."
It sailed through the House, passed the Senate with 97 votes and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/27/obamacare-opponents-cite-schumer-in-bid-to-defeat-contraception-mandate
The legal team backing one of the employers believes a 1993 law introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., could hand them a win.
Schumer, at the time a congressman, introduced the legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to reverse the effects of the Supreme Court's 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision. The court had decided an American Indian man who took peyote lacked a constitutional right to violate federal drug law.
Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic, said in the court's majority opinion that liberally exempting religious objectors from laws "would be courting anarchy."
"Danger increases in direct proportion to the society's diversity of religious beliefs," Scalia warned. "The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind." Scalia also noted: "Judging the centrality of different religious practices is akin to the unacceptable 'business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims.'"
The Schumer-introduced bill responded to Scalia's opinion by declaring the government "shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion."
It sailed through the House, passed the Senate with 97 votes and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/27/obamacare-opponents-cite-schumer-in-bid-to-defeat-contraception-mandate