A federal appeals court in Washington has rejected a challenge to Obamacare regulations that allow religious nonprofits to opt out of providing birth control coverage. The Catholic Archbishop of Washington and nonprofits affiliated with the Catholic Church challenged the regulations, contending they do not go far enough. The regulations at issue were adopted by the Obama administration to accommodate religious nonprofits that object to including birth control in their health insurance plans. Purely religious organizations are automatically exempt from the birth control mandate. But religious nonprofits including universities, hospitals, social service organizations and charities are not because many of their employees, and students, do not subscribe to the same religious beliefs. To deal with that dilemma, the regulations allow religious nonprofits to opt out of birth control coverage by certifying their objections to their insurers with a letter or single-page form. That allows the insurance companies to offer such coverage independently to employees and students who want the coverage. Those challenging the regulations contend that the simple act of opting out burdens their faith by activating substitute coverage. The court rejected that claim, calling it extraordinary and potentially far reaching. The ision is the first since the U.S. Supreme Court last ruled that some for-profit companies , like religious nonprofits, opt out of providing birth control coverage in their insurance plans. In the cases that have follo, various religious nonprofits have maintained, as they did in the Washington case, that the opt-out provision itself is a substantial burden on religion, and s, that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law enacted to enhance religious rights. In rejecting that claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said that Religious objectors do not suffer substantial burdens ... where the only harm to them is that they sincerely feel aggrieved by their inability to prevent what other people would do ... These religious objectors have no right, the court said, to be free from the unease, or even anguish, of knowing that others are legally entitled to receive or provide birth control. The court noted that birth control coverage was added to the Affordable Care Act because it accounts for a large part of womens preventive health care costs. Writing for the 3-0 court panel, Judge Cornelia Pillard, said the challengers argument that the opt out harms them by triggering substitute coverage makes little sense in light of the governments need to carry out a duly enacted program. Using the same theory, she said, a religious conscientious objector to the draft would not have to identify himself as a religious objector on a Selective Service form because that would trigger the drafting of another person in his place and thereby implicate the objector in facilitating war. Neither the draft requirement nor the opt-out requirement imposes a substantial burden on religion, she said. A substantial burden exists when government action puts substantial pressure on an adherent to modify his behavior and to violate his beliefs, Pillard said. A burden does not rise to the level of being substantial when it places an inconsequential or de minimis burden on an adherents religious exercise. The regulations at issue here, she said, in no way involve the challengers in providing contraception services. To the contrary, the opt-out mechanism fastidiously relieves them of any obligation to contract or pay for, arrange, or in any other way provide contraception services; it provides a simple, one-step form for ... washing their hands of all birth control matters.Chicagos Shedd Aquarium has a new resident an orphaned southern sea otter that was rescued from the California coast north of terey. Someone apparently heard the week-old pups plaintive squeal on a stroll along Coastaways Beach between San Mateo and Santa Cruz, Calif., in late and informed the terey Bay Aquariums Sea Otter Program. According to Shedds website: Weighing just over 2 pounds, the pup was tiny, even for a newborn, and one of the smallest rescues in the Sea Otter Programs 30-plus years. Karl er, the programs animal care coordinator, ged that she had been arated from her mom for at least 16 hours and was in dire need of food. Designated Pup 681 by the aquarium, she was provided round-the-clock intensive care for four weeks before being handed over to the Chicago aquarium, which will be her permanent home. Another video showing her arrival at Shedd last week can be seen here.One of the largest public school systems in the United States is dropping all mention of religious affiliations for days off on its official calendar. That means students in tgomery County, Md., in suburban Washington, D.C., will still be getting Christmas, Easter and Jewish holidays off, but officially the ones in will now be called winter break and time off around Easter will be spring break. Other holidays will just be days off. The path to the boards ision started about two years ago on something that was somewhat unrelated. Members of the countys Muslim community roughly estimated at around 10 percent of the more than 1 million population were seeking to have two of their religions holy days added to the calendar of days off. They wanted Eid al-Adha the most. That commemorates the sacrifice, the willingness of Prophet Abraham to sacrifice for the sake of his love for God, says Zainab Chaudry of the Equality for Eid Coalition in tgomery County. The board ided against making Eid al-Adha a day off after studying the absentee rate for that day last year. School officials said it was not much different than the rate for the average school day. Chaudry says many Muslim parents send their kids to the school that day, which is something she experienced as a kid while attending school in the city of Baltimore. My parents, during the Eid holiday, they were very adamant that I not miss time from school, she says. Next year, Eid al-Adha falls on the same day as the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, which tgomery County schools take off. So Muslims asked for a symbolic gesture that a mention of their holy day be put next to Yom Kippur on the official school calendar. Samira Hussain, who works for the county schools and has had four of her children graduate from the system, calls it a token appreciation for Muslims. Muslim students in tgomery County have almost a 100 percent graduation rate, Hussain says. And they have been accepted to some of the top universities in the United States, which is a great testiial to our countys fine educational system. These are your students, but Muslim students also need to feel a sense of belonging, recognition and respect for their contributions. The schools superintendent responded by recommending the reference to Yom Kippur be dropped instead. When he presented it to the Board of Education, which has the final say, board members in short order approved removing all religious references by a 7-1 vote. The best way to accommodate the diversity of our community is to not make choices about which communities were going to respect in our calendar and which ones were not going to respect, says board President Phil Kauffmann. Nearly all of the 16 districts across the country that are larger than tgomery County already dropped religious mentions on their calendars, including neighboring Fairfax County, Va., which did so several years ago. But the boards ision is starting anew ades-old arguments over the role of religion in public schools. And it seems to have isfied very few people. Chaudry says this is not what she and other Muslims were seeking. They just wanted the symbolic recognition of one of their holidays on an official school calendar. Taking this step, I think, would really help to reassure mainstream moderate Muslims in America that they are welcome, and they are a part of society, she says. Six school systems in the U.S. are off on Eid holidays, and New York City or Bill DeBlasios campaign pledged to make the city No. 7.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 17:49:08 +0000
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