By Staff, Baptist Press
OKLAHOMA CITY (BP) – Arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby apparently is willing to defy the federal government and face huge fines for not covering abortion-inducing drugs following a string of court losses in December.
Hobby Lobby’s setbacks in court at the end of the year gained significant media attention, despite the fact that for-profit businesses like the Oklahoma-based business continue to rack up court victories against the mandate.
According to a tally by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, nine for-profit businesses – including three in late December – have won injunctions in courts protecting them from the mandate.
Only three for-profit businesses – Hobby Lobby among them – have failed to obtain an injunction.
Hobby Lobby is the largest business to file suit against the mandate. Its new health care plan went into effect Jan. 1.
“The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, which is representing Hobby Lobby in court. “To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”
A Becket spokesman on Jan. 2 said the law firm was not commenting further on Hobby Lobby’s intentions. But if the company did choose not to cover abortion-inducing drugs mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services, it reportedly could face fines of up to $1.3 million a day.
Under the mandate, businesses and even some religious organizations are required to carry employee insurance that covers contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives such as Plan B and ella that can kill an embryo after fertilization and even after implantation. Pro-lifers consider that action a chemical abortion.
After a federal judge in November ruled Hobby Lobby must cover the drugs, Becket unsuccessfully appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees emergency appeals from the Tenth Circuit.
Sotomayor did say the lawsuit could proceed in the lower court and be appealed back to the high court at the appropriate time.
“Hobby Lobby will continue their appeal before the Tenth Circuit,” Duncan said. “The Supreme Court merely decided not to get involved in the case at this time. It left open the possibility of review after their appeal is completed in the Tenth Circuit.”
The Hobby Lobby suit also includes Mardel, a Christian bookstore chain. The same family – the Greens – owns both.
“These abortion-causing drugs go against our faith, and our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO, in September. “… We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”
All total, there have been 43 lawsuits against the mandate.
Many of them involve religious organizations such as Christian colleges and universities.