Notre Dame sues Federal Government

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Notre Dame
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<p>The outrage Notre Dame has been voicing over the birth control mandate seems to have solidified; according to an email from Father Jenkins, the university has filed a lawsuit against the federal government. It's also on CNN right now.</p>

<p>For a little background, religious organizations had an exception to the law stating that contraception be provided in all health insurance plans, but recently that has been altered to churches having the exception, leaving religious universities without such an exception.</p>

<p>I suppose the two questions, which aren't necessarily the same, are whether the mandate is right, which a lot of people feel strongly about, and whether the mandate is constitutional, which is what the courts will have to decide.</p>

<p>I attended a panel discussion at the ND law school during the year, and the two professors on the panel basically put forward the constitutional argument (the other two panel members took the "God hates birth control" route), which hinged on religious liberty and freedom of conscience. It seemed pretty solid, though there's also Supreme Court precedent that falls on the other side, so it's not a clear-cut win.</p>

<p>The morning after pill is, of course, an elective medication, and thus the arguments work best when discussing it. However, the birth control pill has a range of medical applications, and stands as the alternative to invasive surgery in certain cases. I wonder how the debate might be viewed if a Jehovah's Witness university was trying to offer its employees a health plan that didn't cover blood transfusions.</p>

<p>Father Jenkins took a lot of heat for the customary invitation that was extended to President Obama to be commencement speaker his first year in office, but his recent decisions to accuse the President of trampling religious freedom and now filing a lawsuit against the administration show that he's gone the complete other way. I fear it may paint ND in a partisan light and alienate some current and potential students. </p>

<p>The text of the lawsuit is available here: <a href="http://opac.nd.edu/assets/69013/hhs_complaint.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://opac.nd.edu/assets/69013/hhs_complaint.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Any thoughts? Is it appropriate for the university to take such action?</p>

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<p>“Any thoughts? Is it appropriate for the university to take such action?”</p>

<p>Of course. Notre Dame will be directly affected by the mandate, both as an employer and as a provider of student health insurance policies. I am personally delighted that Fr. Jenkins has made this call, and perhaps those who keep wishing that the University would shed its Catholic identity and join its secular peers will finally get the memo. </p>

<p>Birth control pills are sometimes prescribed for non-contraceptive purposes and, in those cases, the University’s employee health insurance plan currently covers it. With the appropriate co-pay. Just like any other medication. So that argument is irrelevant. </p>

<p>If current and potential students are “alienated” by this decision, then they are free to enroll elsewhere. Their places will be eagerly taken by others who embrace the University’s Catholic identity. But my guess is that admissions won’t see any downturn in applications.</p>

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<p>Geez, make up your mind, Fr Jenkins! You embrace Obama in 2009 and now you plan to sue the gov’t over issues that Obama clearly embraces?</p>

<p>I don’t think we are surprised that ND is suing over this issue…just think there was a mixed message of sorts when Obama was commencement speaker in 2009.</p>

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<p>I am pleased Notre Dame has taken this action along with many other Catholic institutions. I am not worried about it alienating current and/or potential students. I agree with Claremarie, they are free to enroll elsewhere. I am also certain that any donors that may be in disagreement with the lawsuit thus withholding their donations, will be negated by those donors that will show support for Notre Dame’s stand for religious freedom. As for myself, along with many of our friends, we have sent emails to thank Fr. Jenkins for involving the University in this fight.</p>

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<p>As a non-Catholic who has neither a connection to nor an interest in Notre Dame, that’s how it looks to me.</p>

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<p>I am inclined to agree with claremarie’s point that nobody has to apply to Notre Dame. Either students will apply in roughly the same numbers, or they won’t. If fewer students apply, Notre Dame will have to decide whether its stand on artificial birth control is worth more to the institution that the size of the applicant pool.</p>

<p>I am more concerned about employees of the university–secretaries, facilities maintenance workers, and the like–who provide completely secular services, and whose job descriptions have nothing to do with being Catholic. IMO, Notre Dame should hire these people without regard to their religion, and shouldn’t be able to impede their access to legally available products and services. And, yes, I think excluding them from the employer-based health insurance is impeding the employees’ access.</p>

<p>I recognize this issue creates an uncomfortable tension between the right of a Catholic university to teach and abide by its doctrine, and the right of individual employees to live their lives as they see fit, regardless of the Church’s doctrine. I believe that both of these things–the right of the university and the right of the individual employee–are good and valuable. The issue is so difficult precisely because two good and valuable things are in conflict. But I’m not on Notre Dame’s side on this one.</p>

<p>(P.S. I recognize I’m kind of an interloper here. This thread popped up on the “Most Recent” list, and I replied without realizing until after the fact that I’m on the Notre Dame board. If y’all like, I’ll go away and leave you to have this discussion among yourselves, in the closest thing to private that the Internet affords. No disrespect intended.)</p>

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<p>Individual employees can live their lives as they see fit, but they should not expect a Catholic university to subsidize their choices when those choices are in direct opposition to long-standing, sincerely-held, well-publicized religious beliefs of the institution.</p>

<p>I’m not a Catholic; I’m a Protestant Christian who does not believe that using birth control is wrong. However, I have grave concerns about the federal government forcing Catholic institutions to subsidize birth control, which the institutions oppose for religious reasons. After all, the employees chose to work for Notre Dame when contraception was not covered by the insurance plan; how can free contraception suddenly become an inalienable right for those employees?</p>

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<p>Schokolade, no question, that is the counterargument. And it’s a really good one. I totally understand why it persuades a lot of people, even though I don’t buy it personally.</p>

<p>I don’t buy it because the reality of contemporary American life is that workers, especially unskilled workers, don’t always have as much control over where they work as that argument seems to imply. People need jobs because they need income and they need health insurance (whether it covers family planning or not). But as a practical matter, they can’t just choose among employers they way they go to the Safeway and choose Pepsi or Coke.</p>

<p>I also do buy the argument that there’s a difference between the Catholic Church’s operating parishes and seminaries, which serve explicitly religious purposes, and its operating universities, hospitals and soup kitchens, which provide more secular services than explicitly religious ones.</p>

<p>The place where I think I’m on thinnest ice is this: does my position mean that Yeshiva University, which is explicitly Orthodox and Jewish, should have to provide non-kosher food for non-Jewish employees in its cafeterias? Presently, I think that’s not equivalent to the Notre Dame case. I think it’s fine for Yeshiva to provide only kosher food, and to permit only kosher food in its buildings, because Yeshiva’s employees are still free to eat cheeseburgers, shrimp and bacon when they’re not at work. By contrast, I don’t think it should be OK for Yeshiva to say that every baby boy born at its teaching hospitals should be circumcised. It would be OK by me if Notre Dame were to prohibit condoms, diaphragms and abortions in the workplace. But as I see it, Notre Dame wants to keep in place a policy that impedes its employees’ access to legal products and services at all times and places, even when those employees’ jobs have nothing to do with being Catholic or practicing Catholicism.</p>

<p>But, as I think I implied before, I actually don’t like the fact that my position does seem to interfere with Notre Dame’s right to exercise its institutional conscience. I’m just choosing, with some reluctance, to limit Notre Dame’s exercise of its institutional conscience instead of its employees’ exercise of their individual consciences.</p>

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<p>Yeshiva’s employees are free to eat cheeseburgers, but the university understandably would not want to provide or directly pay for them.</p>

<p>Notre Dame’s employees are similarly free to use contraceptives, ND just doesn’t want to provide or directly pay for them either. While contraceptives may often be more expensive than cheeseburgers, it is possible to obtain and pay for contraceptives without the university paying for them for them or providing them on-site. Also like cheeseburgers, it is also possible to live without them or settle for the cheapest option. It may be inconvenient to do without, and I think it is essential to keep these things legal to allow for people to make their own moral choices (with the exception of abortifacients, which directly harm another person, but that’s another debate entirely…), but access to FREE birth control is hardly an inalienable right.</p>

<p>I am a Catholic who does not morally object to birth control. However, I do morally object to the interference of government into the moral and/or religious decisions of any person or organization. No one should ever be legally forced to do something that they believe is wrong.</p>

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<p>I understand that. It makes me uncomfortable, too.</p>

<p>I think my objection could be fairly put this way: it’s okay for the Church to act this way, and to restrict the legal activities of its employees, when it is acting as a church. I have a problem when the Church extends its presence into the secular realm, but still seeks to make its employees and patrons adhere to religious doctrines in order to provide or receive secular services. A Church-operated sandwich shop should have to operate as a sandwich shop and not as a church. The same principle applies, I think, to hospitals and adoption agencies. And, I think, to universities that are not explicitly seminaries (but I think this case is a little harder to make than the case for hospitals and adoption agencies).</p>

<p>As for the matter of employees’ right to free birth control, I think an argument can be made that nobody is entitled to it. But if existing law requires that employer-provided health insurance must provide it (and at the moment it does), then the Church-owned sandwich shop, the Muslim-owned sandwich shop, and the humanist-owned sandwich shop should all have to provide it. IMO, of course.</p>

<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>

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<p>Shellzie - I would just add that the pill works in one of three ways to prevent pregnancy as registered with the FDA. One of three ways is that it does in fact act as an abortifacient, preventing the fertilized egg (human life) from implanting on the uterus. Below are a couple of YouTube video links on the subject. From this understanding the pill is clearly morally objectionable as it does kill human life with some frequency.</p>

<p>[YouTube</a> - How “The Pill” works as an Abortifacient](<a href=“How "The Pill" works as an Abortifacient - YouTube”>How "The Pill" works as an Abortifacient - YouTube)</p>

<p>[YouTube</a> - Does the “pill” really prevent conception?](<a href=“Does the "pill" really prevent conception? - YouTube”>Does the "pill" really prevent conception? - YouTube)</p>

<p>I congratulate ND for its stance.</p>

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<p>“IMO, Notre Dame should hire these people without regard to their religion, and shouldn’t be able to impede their access to legally available products and services. And, yes, I think excluding them from the employer-based health insurance is impeding the employees’ access.”</p>

<p>How? Do you honestly believe that employees of Notre Dame, or any other Catholic institution, are deprived of access to contraception simply because the costs are not covered by their health insurance policy? If so, you are living in a dream world. Contraception is cheap and widely available. In South Bend, for instance, there is a 24-hour Wal-Mart and two 24-hour pharmacies within five miles of campus. The monthly cost for the most expensive contraceptive pill is LESS than the monthly cost of cigarettes for a regular smoker. It’s less than the cost of a smartphone. Or a daily McDonald’s run. And, yes, low-income workers indulge in all of these expenditures. Free and low-cost contraceptives are available from Planned Parenthood and other clinics (often provided with government family planning funds). And even the Guttmacher Institute does not claim that “I can’t afford them” is the reason that women with unintended pregnancies did not use birth control.</p>

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<p>Rathole comment … </p>

<p>This situation is great example of the US system of tying medical insurance of citizens to the employer defined options is about the most illogical set-up possible. With virtually any simple rational set-up this case would not exist.</p>

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<p>I’ve addressed this in part in post #9, above:</p>

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<p>Whether birth control is “cheap” is, I guess, a matter of perspective. According to Planned Parenthood’s web site, birth control pills cost between $15 and $50 per month. (If you’re in an unskilled, low-wage job, I expect those don’t seem like the same price at all.) Fifty dollars a month is $600/year; that is money. Can many people carve it out of their personal budgets, particularly if the alternative is childrearing, which costs a whole lot more? Yes. Should they have to? Maybe. I’m not sure I would be bothered if everyone did (with some provision made for the poor). But if we have a system that requires employers’ health plans to cover family planning, then employers’ health plans should cover family planning. I don’t love an exemption for churches qua churches, but I can live with it. But, as I said above, when churches branch out into providing secular services, I think they should have to abide by the rules that apply to other entities that provide secular services. The Church could, after all, decide to go out of the hospital business, and out of the higher-education business. If the Church restricted itself to strictly ecclesiastical business, it wouldn’t be feeling pressure to provide family planning coverage for employees.</p>

<p>I agree with 3togo’s observation that a lot of the trouble here stems from the fact that employer-provided health insurance is actually a bad mechanism for meeting the health-care needs of the population.</p>

<p>The reality is, a lot of us pay for actions undertaken by the community, or by members of the community, that we personally find objectionable. People who object to the ongoing war in Afghanistan can’t get their taxes back. Under the status quo, we all pay the costs when an uninsured drunk driver injures himself or someone else, even though there isn’t really a very large pro-drunk-driving lobby. I really am genuinely sorry that it causes so many Catholics distress to be underwriting the cost of family planning products and services for employees of Catholic institutions. I still think that causing these Catholics distress is the lesser of two evils here.</p>

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<p>“Can many people carve it out of their personal budgets, particularly if the alternative is childrearing, which costs a whole lot more? Yes.”</p>

<p>And they do. The research consistently shows that women who WANT to take birth control pills are generally already doing so, with or without employer-provided insurance coverage (which, until the mandate, required a copay). Those who discontinue birth control pills, or never choose to take them, rarely report that the reason is “my employer-provided health insurance doesn’t cover them.” Taking the pill requires a level of diligence and maturity that makes it a poor choice for disorganized women living in relatively dysfunctional situations. It also has negative side effects, both actual and perceived, and is not suitable for older women or those with certain health conditions. </p>

<p>The contraceptive mandate has almost nothing to do with providing access to contraceptives to women who are currently cruelly denied the same, but with rewarding a loyal political base – middle-class women who are delighted to shift the cost of their contraceptives onto Someone Else.</p>

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<p>Maybe so. But that’s a decision that was made politically. Political decisions are binding even upon the people who didn’t vote for them. So what makes Notre Dame more deserving of a pass than pacifists who oppose paying taxes to fund the war in Afghanistan?</p>

<p>Also, I want to be careful that my position doesn’t get shifted while we’re talking. I’ve never asserted that Notre Dame is denying its employees access to family planning services and products. I have asserted that if it doesn’t cover family planning as other employers, it is impeding access by making the cost of family planning higher for ND employees than it is for employees of other entities. And I think when ND is operating as a university and not as a church, it shouldn’t be allowed to do that. It should have to operate under the same rules as Indiana University or Butler.</p>

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<p>This will definately scare away potential students. I for one won’t be applying. Birth control is a woman’s right and I’m curious to know if there were any women on that panel. However, the school is a religious institution so I think they have the right; but as a whole not providing birth control is outraegous. And the name can be deceptive: it helps with a variety of issues a WOMAN faces, not just unwanted pregnancy.</p>

<p>Sent from my SPH-M930 using CC</p>

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<p>deepblusea, ND does provide contraceptives under their current plan if it is for a medical reason:</p>

<p>“Under Notre Dame’s current medical plan, employees cannot receive reimbursement for oral contraceptives, contraceptive devices or contraceptive implants, except when specifically requested by a physician based on medical necessity and for purposes other than contraception”</p>

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<p>Deepblusea-</p>

<p>On what authority do you believe birth control is a women’s “right”? The Catholic church says it is immoral for several reasons, including the fact it can act as an abortifacient in aborting human life.</p>

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<p>The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of birth control… Why should an employer have to cover birth control? Also with regards to your pacifist argument ND said it would be fine if free birth control were provided by say a general tax. It’s not OK with directly footing the bill. The issue is ND does not want to directly cooperate with evil, but it will accept living in a world that has evil. It just doesn’t want to contribute to it.</p>

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<p>Furthermore, everyone applying to ND knows you can’t get birth control on campus. Nothing changes in this respect.</p>