Supreme Court Sides with Christian College
By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (Worthy News)– The United States Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Christian college in Illinois isn’t required to cover emergency contraceptives that might end a pregnancy, according to The Christian Post.
Thursday’s 6-3 vote exempted Wheaton College from the HHS birth control mandate that it claimed violates the institution’s religious beliefs; therefore, the college cannot be fined by the IRS for not covering emergency contraceptives that can take up to several days after unprotected sex.
Further, Wheaton College has declined to use a third party to provide services that the college opposes on religious grounds, which would constitute a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the 16-page opinion for the three dissenting female justices on the Court who sided against the Christian college.
“Wheaton is ‘religiously opposed to emergency contraceptives because they may act by killing a human embryo,'” Sotomayor added. “And it ‘believes that authorizing its [third-party administrator] to provide these drugs in [its] place makes it complicit in grave moral evil.’
“Wheaton is mistaken — not as a matter of religious faith, in which it is undoubtedly sincere, but as a matter of law: Not every sincerely felt ‘burden’ is a ‘substantial’ one, and it is for courts, not litigants, to identify which are”.
However, Philip Ryken, president of Wheaton College, praised the Court’s temporary injunction.
“On the eve of Independence Day, we are grateful to God that the Supreme Court has made a wise decision in protecting our religious liberty — at least until we have an opportunity to make our full case in court. We continue to believe that a college community that affirms the sanctity of human life from conception to the grave should not be coerced by the government into facilitating the provision of abortion-inducing drugs,” Ryken said.
Eternal Word Television Network was also exempted for refusing to comply with the HHS mandate to provide various forms of birth control pills as well as five other Catholic groups based in Wyoming.