Christian Legal Society’s Work For Religious Liberty in the HHS Mandate Fight
For over two years, Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom has tried to persuade the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to protect religious liberty 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. CLS urged the Court to protect all Americans’ religious liberty 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.
CLS’s Center has 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 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 has written 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.