Supreme Court Refuses Two Religious Cases

This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Recently, religious organizations have been pretty successful at getting the courts to help them further their agenda. But this term, it's not going to happen.

The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear two cases brought by religious organizations. One involved birth control, and the other involved church services in a public library.

In the first case, several religious organizations were trying to overturn a New York law that forced their faith-based charities to pay for birth control for their employees. The law said that health benefits provided for employees must include birth control. The faith-based social-help organizations, such as Catholic Charities, claimed they were a religious organization and this violated their religious freedom to oppose birth control.

Lower courts ruled that they hired people of various beliefs and their primary purpose was not religious but charitable, and this made the law applicable to them. The Supreme Court's refusal to hear their case means they will now have to include birth control in their employee health benefits.

The second case was brought by Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries. The church wanted the court to force a public library to allow them to hold religious services at the facility. They claimed they had a right to meet there since they were a "community" organization.

The library said allowing the religious services was tantamount to public-financing of religious services. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in SanFrancisco ruled in favor of the library saying, "Although religious worship is an important institution in any community, we disagree that anything remotely community-related must therefore be granted access to the Antioch Library meeting room."

The court's refusal to take this case means the church cannot hold services at the library. I applaud the Supreme Court's decision to refuse both of these cases. Maybe this court term will be a better one than last year's -- well, I can always hope.