The Patriot Post® · Religious Liberty Denied, Supreme Court Shrugs
Leftists in this country are celebrating this week’s release of a Supreme Court decision, as well as a non-decision. Naturally, both portend dark times ahead for religious liberty, the sanctity of life and protection of conscience.
We took on the Court’s outrageous abortion decision yesterday. But the other case involved matters of conscience for those who oppose abortion, including abortion-inducing birth control, for religious or moral reasons. The Supreme Court declined to review the case involving a third-generation, family-owned pharmacy in Washington State. In 2007, the Washington Board of Pharmacy passed regulations forcing pro-life pharmacists to provide abortion drugs to customers. The Storman family, when previously presented with such a request, had always referred the customer to one of dozens of other nearby pharmacies that supplied the abortion drugs. No one was denied service because of the Stormans’ declining to participate in the transaction.
In 2012, a federal court struck down the regulation as unconstitutional, declaring that there was “abundant evidence” that the law was specifically passed to force religious pharmacists and pharmacy owners to violate their faith and conscience. However, the Ninth Circus, the most overturned (by a wide margin) of all the circuit courts, reversed the federal court ruling and upheld the law. By refusing to take up the case, the Supreme Court allows the Ninth Circuit ruling to stand, and allows the state to violate the actual constitutional rights of American citizens — as opposed to those fabricated “rights” created out of “emanations and penumbras.”
Writing in dissent from the Court’s denial of certiorari, Justice Samuel Alito described the process leading up to the law, showing that it was clearly motivated by anti-religious sentiment. He also warned of the dangers ahead indicated by the Court’s refusal to address the case: “At issue are Washington State regulations that are likely to make a pharmacist unemployable if he or she objects on religious grounds to dispensing certain prescription medications. … [T]here is much evidence that the impetus for the adoption of the regulations was hostility to pharmacists whose religious beliefs regarding abortion and contraception are out of step with prevailing opinion in the State. Yet the Ninth Circuit held that the regulations do not violate the First Amendment, and this Court does not deem the case worthy of our time. If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.”
Our forefathers fought a decade-long war to be free of the tyranny of King George. Much blood was shed in that war to secure the very liberties of speech, religion, conscience, and many more, that we enjoy today.
One can only imagine how quickly they’d have taken up arms if they had been told the government demanded they participate in the killing of innocent children.
The Left claims to be tolerant, but they seek the eradication of any God-given, constitutionally protected rights that impede their agenda. They are forcing religious pharmacists to dispense abortion drugs. They have tried to force Catholic nuns to provide birth control for employees of their organizations. They’ve jailed a county clerk for declining to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, and then opposed a law that would allow someone else to provide the service. They’ve forced bakers, photographers and florists to participate in services to which those entrepreneurs object as a matter of conscience.
As is abundantly clear, the Left is no longer interested in tolerance (if it ever was). The Left demands nothing less than full and complete acquiescence, accommodation and approval from every single American, regardless of religious or moral views.
And the Supreme Court just shrugged.