It’s like a Walking Dead zombie wearing a motorcycle helmet or a well constructed law, or something.
From Reuters:
U.S. justices decline to hear another Obamacare challenge
The court rejected a petition filed by Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, which had raised various objections to the law, including to the key provision that requires individuals to obtain health insurance.
By rejecting the Liberty University case, the justices left intact a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of a May 2013 decision that dismissed the claims made by the college and two individuals, Michele Waddell and Joanne Merrill.
The court will hear two cases which challenge the constitutionality of a requirement for corporations to provide health insurance that includes contraception.
With the House of Representatives only scheduling eight working days between now and the holiday break, any change in the law would have to wait until the new year, which puts the Republicans in the unenviable position of voting to take away people’s health care. I’m sure they’ll do it on what passes for ‘principle,’ but it’s going to look even worse if they do (and if the Dems have the courage–always a questionable prospect–of calling them out.)
In more news on the Women’s healthcare front, the ACLU is suing a the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on the grounds that their religiously based rules caused a patient to suffer a miscarriage. From NBC News:
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Michigan are suing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on behalf of Tamesha Means, 30, of Muskegon, Mich., according to a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. district court in eastern Michigan.
The lawsuit aims to highlight what ACLU calls the “trauma and harm that Tamesha and other pregnant women in similar situations have experienced at Catholic-sponsored hospitals.”
The suit claims that the hospital knew that the fetus was not viable, and witheld medically indicated care due to restrictions placed upon them by the Conference, and that further those restrictions also prevented the hospital from telling her the truth about her condition or the restrictions themselves that prevented appropriate care. The hospital in question is the only hospital in the county where the patient resided at the time of the events in 2010.
When my daughter is able to make decisions for herself without consulting me, then I will have done my job as her father. When she chooses to consult with me even when she doesn’t have to, then I will have done my job well. I resent the living shit out these people who are trying to run my family in a way that does not comport with my beliefs. I have said before that Pope Francis is saying the kinds of things that I needed to hear before I would consider returning to the Church. Well, words without policy are like faith without works–dead. (James 2:14-26)
Also too, open thread.