Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued the delay of the ObamaCare contraception mandate late Tuesday at the request of the Little Sisters of the Poor's Mullen Home for the Aged, a nursing home in Denver operated by the Baltimore-based order of Catholic nuns. The home serves about 100 low-income seniors.
According to our friend Todd Beaman of NewsMax, noted constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz said of Sotomayor’s ruling, "There are two principles that are clear in American law… Number one is that you don't make people violate their religious principles unless it's a very, very, very, very strong and compelling reason for it. Number two: You don't give people a free ride and there's room for compromise."
We’re not sure where in the Constitution Dershowitz found number two, but we couldn’t agree more with his assessment of number one – the question is does this mean the ObamaCare contraception mandate is kaput, or even that the entire ObamaCare law will be thrown out?
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge this spring by Hobby Lobby Inc., the Oklahoma City-based, Christian managed art and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees.
The company, which won in the lower courts, contends that the ObamaCare contraception mandate violates their religious liberties.
Despite Sotomayor's decision, however, Dershowitz does not believe that Obamacare will be overturned by the court in the Hobby Lobby case.
"This is a relatively small part, and the health bill would have done fine if it didn't cover this kind of thing and required people to insure for it themselves," he told Steve Malzberg of NewsMax TV. "But they decided to go all the way — and inevitably there's going to be religious conflict, and the Supreme Court is there to resolve these religious conflicts."
Dershowitz told Malzberg, "There are going to be a lot of people on that court who are sympathetic to religious views, and so it's not easy to predict how the case will come out — but it's an important case."
So, is the ObamaCare contraception mandate going to be thrown out? Dershowitz says there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. And if there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen at the Supreme Court, then conservatives must keep up the pressure for a legislative solution to the religious freedom issues raised by the ObamaCare contraception and abortion mandate.