Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters. A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a group of Christian business owners and employees need not pay for a medication prescribed to prevent HIV infection because the mandate conflicts with religious beliefs. The business owners are pushing back on coverage required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which has been a flashpoint in religious freedom battles for years. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor sided with Texas business owners that the Obamacare mandate violated the company’s rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 law that prevents the federal government from burdening a person’s free exercise of religion. While the Constitution remains the supreme law of the land, and the First Amendment protects the right of all Americans to worship freely, countless questions of religious liberty arise and are vetted at the state level. To get a ground level view of how each state is legally preserving or constraining religious freedom, the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy launched an annual Religious Liberty in the States index . (The center is the […]
News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.