CLS’ Work For Religious Liberty In The HHS Mandate Fight

For over two years, Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom tried to persuade the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to protect religious freedom against the HHS Mandate. In the Supreme Court, CLS led a coalition of religious and civil liberties organizations that filed a brief, authored by Professor Douglas Laycock, in support of religious business owners’ challenges to the Mandate. In that brief, CLS urged the Court to protect all Americans’ religious freedom by accurately interpreting and fully enforcing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”). CLS and many of the organizations on the brief actively participated in the effort to pass RFRA, which has been the guardian of Americans’ religious freedom for two decades.

All total, CLS’s Center filed 16 briefs in the federal courts of appeals, including a brief in support of the Little Sisters of the Poor’s challenge to the Mandate. The Center also sent two comment letters to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and signed onto several letters asking the President and the HHS Secretary to reconsider the ill-advised Mandate. The Center wrote several articles addressing the Mandate’s problems. The Center co-sponsored two events observing RFRA’s 20th anniversary and celebrating RFRA’s protection of religious liberty.

CLS’ Articles Regarding the HHS Mandate

The Center has published several short pieces explaining the threat that the Mandate poses to religious liberty, including:

Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court’s New Term by Kim Colby, Journal of Christian Legal Thought, Fall 2013

Religious Liberty in the Marketplace: A Tale of Two Families and Two Courts by Kim Colby, The Christian Lawyer, Fall 2013

The HHS Mandate and the Pretense of Choice by Kim Colby, The Christian Lawyer, Summer 2013

Midway by Kim Colby, Journal of Christian Legal Thought, Fall 2012

Religious Liberty Spring? by Kim Colby, The Christian Lawyer, Spring 2012

Religious and Civil Liberties Groups Urge Supreme Court To Defend RFRA, Christian Legal Society News Release, January 28, 2014

Also check out Professor Doug Laycock’s contribution to the Scotusblog Symposium on the HHS Mandate based on his brief for CLS in the Supreme Court, and Professor Rick Garnett’s excellent contribution.