Hercules Suit Makes Strong Case For Business Owners’ Religious Freedom

In the first-ever judicial order blocking enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate, God has given Colorado’s family-owned Hercules Industries a critical legal victory – one with enormous implications for your civil liberties and the religious freedom of people like you all over America.

Your prayers and support are enabling Alliance Defending Freedom to represent Hercules and, in doing so, to defend family business owners and believers across the country who are being forced by this mandate to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception – even if doing so compels them to violate their deepest religious and moral convictions. Those failing to comply with the mandate face heavy financial penalties from the government – penalties so severe that few businesses could survive them.

This is an unprecedented attack on our religious freedom and constitutional liberty.
Hercules owners William Newland, Paul Newland, James Newland, and Christine Ketterhagen, and its vice-president, Andrew Newland, seek nothing more than to run their company in a manner that reflects their sincerely held religious beliefs, including their belief that God requires respect for the dignity of human life and sexuality.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a motion for injunction on April 30 with the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, asking that enforcement of the abortion-inducing drug mandate be blocked pending a decision in the lawsuit we have filed challenging the mandate. In a brief filed simultaneously, our attorneys contend that “the mandate disregards religious conscience rights that are enshrined in federal statutory and constitutional law,” and that it violates the First Amendment “due to its massive inapplicability and its discrimination among religions.”

In response, the court issued an order on July 27 that halts enforcement of the mandate until the lawsuit is settled. The order came in spite of strenuous opposition from the Obama administration, whose attorneys actually argue – in blatant contrast to the Constitution – that people of faith forfeit their religious liberty once they engage in business.

“Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith,” says Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living. For the time being, Hercules Industries will be able to do just that.

“The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama administration ultimately has its way,” he adds. Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

Clearly, the danger here is not just to one family business in Colorado – but to you, your family, and countless family business owners and employees throughout the U.S. Please be in special prayer for this crucial case and for our lawyers as they pursue this matter – and other pressing cases – in the courtrooms of America.

Author: Alan Sears