Life News
The Trump administration recently stopped pursuing an Obama-era lawsuit against a Christian university that opposes paying for drugs that may cause abortions in its employee health plans.
Baptist Press reports Union University, a Christian school in Jackson, Tennessee, and the federal government recently reached a settlement in the dispute over the Obamacare HHS mandate.
“We rejoice over this outcome, in which the government acknowledges that the contraception mandate would impose a substantial burden on our exercise of religion and violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” university President Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver said in a statement.
In the settlement, the U.S. government agreed that the HHS mandate imposed a “substantial burden” on the university’s religious freedom, according to the report. It referred to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving the Christian-owned business Hobby Lobby.
“We believe, based on the Bible, that life begins at conception,” Oliver said. “We went to court to defend religious liberty, the right to believe and to live according to those beliefs, and we are glad that religious liberty prevailed.”
Here’s more from the report:
The agreement between Union and the U.S. government specifies that Union’s employee health plans are permanently exempt from the HHS contraception mandate.
The settlement follows new rules issued by the Trump administration Oct. 6 to exempt entities from the mandate based on their religious beliefs.
Union filed one of 56 lawsuits involving more than 140 faith-based plaintiffs against the federal HHS mandate in 2014 that sought a judgment declaring that the abortifacient mandate of the Affordable Care Act violated the university’s rights, not only under RFRA but also under the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act. …
As part of the settlement, the government agreed to pay the bulk of the legal fees that Union accrued.
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