Last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will exempt employers who have religious or moral objections to providing contraceptives, including drugs that can cause abortions. This is an important action to restore religious liberties that were stripped away in the Obamacare HHS mandate.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties brought the Obamacare violation of religious freedom to the national spotlight when they fought the mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court. The sincere religiously informed consciences of the owners of Conestoga Wood and Hobby Lobby played heavily into the opinion of Justice Samuel Alito, which upheld religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

“Our legal team went to court in 2012 to fight this unjust mandate on behalf of the Hahns, a Mennonite family and owners of Conestoga Wood Specialties,” said Michael Geer, President of the Pennsylvania Family Institute. “Thankfully, in 2014, the Supreme Court victory granted relief for the Hahns and the Green family (owners of Hobby Lobby) in a landmark ruling. We’re glad now to see that other religious employers and ministries will be protected as well, thanks to the President’s actions.”

“President Trump deserves to be thanked for upholding his promise on religious freedom,” said Paul Weber, President of Focus on the Family’s Family Policy Alliance. “And we’re grateful for the team of attorneys brought together by the Pennsylvania Family Institute that paved the way to this victory through their outstanding work that led to the Supreme Court win.”

Randall Wenger, Chief Counsel for the Independence Law Center, was interviewed by a local Fox affiliate outside of Conestoga Wood to discuss this policy improvement. “The first liberty in our Bill of Rights is the free exercise of religion, and what this mandate is doing is protecting the rights of conscience not only for religious people but for non religious people.”

In response to Leftist hysteria over this minor change, National Review’s David French explains that “Totally ignored by these borderline-apocalyptic assessments of what was, in fact, a modest rollback is the reality that birth control has only very recently come to be viewed as an entitlement.”

IFI joins other pro-family groups across the nation in applauding this important action by President Trump. Moreover, we stand in full agreement with his statement on the issue: “No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and the tenets of their faith.”

Oct. 27th – IFI Annual Banquet with Lt. Col. Allen West

Join us in Hoffman Estates for IFI’s annual banquet on Friday, Oct. 27th.  This year we are celebrating our 25th Anniversary with American hero Lt. Col. Allen West as our keynote speaker. Space is limited, don’t miss this special event. Click HERE for more information.

Call (708) 781-9328 for more information.

This week the owners of Liberty Ridge Farm near Albany, New York, which is rented out for birthday parties and about a dozen weddings each year, have been levied a $10,00 fine and ordered to pay two women $1,500 a piece for not allowing the lesbian couple to have their 2012 wedding ceremony on the property (see earlier story). And similar trouble is brewing in Pennsylvania, where The Cake Pros bakery in Schuylkill Haven and W. W. Bridal Boutique in Bloomsburg likewise declined to be part of same-gender weddings.

Randall Wenger, chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Family Institute, tells OneNewsNow that the owners are Christians who recognize that the Bible expressly condemns homosexual conduct.

“True tolerance should mean that we’re free to live according to our beliefs without being fined or forced out of business,” he submits.

Wenger further points out that “tons” of other businesses in Pennsylvania, where “same-sex marriage” is legal, are willing to accommodate same-gender pairs.

“It’s not as if somebody can’t go out and buy a wedding dress or get a cake baked,” the attorney states. “The issue is whether those who have a conscience against doing so need to be forced to do it to be made an example of, because somehow it’s wrong for us to think differently, believe differently or act differently.”

He goes on to argue that “in America, we should have the freedom to do that.”

Pennsylvania is considering a law that would criminalize actions such as those taken by the two business owners.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a brief Wednesday that responds to the Obama administration’s defense of its abortion pill mandate in one of two major legal challenges the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on March 25. Alliance Defending Freedom and allied attorneys represent the Hahns, a Pennsylvania Mennonite Christian family, and their woodworking business in one of those cases, Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius.

The mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy financial penalties if the mandate’s requirements aren’t met.

“In America, we tolerate a diversity of opinions and beliefs; we don’t try to separate what people do from what they believe,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman. “The Constitution guarantees the highest form of respect to the Hahns’ freedom. The government must prove why disregarding that freedom is somehow justified.”

According to the Alliance Defending Freedom reply brief, “the government contends that [the Hahns] harm the ‘freedom’ of third parties simply by not buying them abortifacients…. But that turns ordinary notions of liberty upside down. Citizens are already free to buy birth control for themselves and the government often subsidizes those purchases. Yet in the government’s view that is not enough. For the government, coercion is the new ‘freedom.’”

“Americans must be free to exercise their constitutionally protected liberties without punishment,” added Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “That at least includes freedom from government attempts to force them to pay for other people’s abortion pills.”

In January, numerous third parties filed briefs in both Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius and The Becket Fund’s Hobby Lobby Stores v. Sebelius case, which also challenges the mandate. The briefs filed in support of Conestoga Wood Specialties and Hobby Lobby outnumbered the briefs filed in favor of the Obama administration by nearly three to one.

The Hahns asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled 2-1 against them. The decision conflicts with most other circuits and with the vast majority of rulings on the mandate so far. According to a dissent that Circuit Judge Kent Jordan wrote in that case, the mandate could cost the Hahns $95,000 per day if they don’t agree to live contrary to their Christian convictions.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys are lead counsel in the case together with co-counsel Randall Wenger of the Independence Law Center and Charles Proctor III of the Pennsylvania firm Proctor, Lindsay & Dixon. They are two of nearly 2,300 attorneys allied with Alliance Defending Freedom.