It is difficult to keep up with the court cases challenging the HHS contraceptives mandate–the requirement that employee health plans (except for grandfathered ones and those offered by churches) must cover the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive services, including emergency contraceptives that some regard to be abortifacients.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty says there are currently 33 cases with more than 100 plaintiffs (unless even more lawsuits were filed since yesterday afternoon!). (See the HHS Mandate Information Central area on Becket’s website, which lists the cases, with links to key documents, and also includes multiple other key resources, such as a timeline and links to government documents, commentary, and protest letters.) Among the plaintiffs are Protestant as well as Catholic colleges, charitable organizations as well as businesses, states as well as broadcasters. Many of the lawsuits are awaiting action; some have made progress; some have been dismissed-but with appeals pending.

Three noteworthy very recent developments:

* Yesterday, two additional religious colleges–this time, two Baptist ones (East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University)–sued the federal government to stop the contraceptives mandate. Dr. Samuel Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University, who testified against the mandate to Congress, says this about the lawsuit:

“Baptists have always advocated religious liberty, and religious liberty is what is at stake in this situation. As the famous Baptist preacher, George W. Truett once remarked, ‘A Baptist would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty for his Catholic neighbor, and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else.’ We are rising today to ensure that religious liberty, the first freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, is protected and preserved.”

* On Oct. 2, Tyndale House Publishers, an evangelical company that publishes Bibles, among other things, sued HHS. As a company, it qualifies neither for the exemption that churches get nor the one-year “temporary enforcement safe harbor” that is delaying application of the contraceptives requirement to many faith-based organizations. The Alliance Defending Freedom press release on the case says this:

“The publisher is subject to the mandate because Obama administration rules say for-profit corporations are categorically non-religious, even though Tyndale House is strictly a publisher of Bibles and other Christian materials and is owned by the non-profit Tyndale House Foundation. The foundation provides grants to help meet the physical and spiritual needs of people around the world.

“‘Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,’ said Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. ‘To say that a Bible publisher is not religious is patently absurd. Tyndale House is a prime example of how ridiculous and arbitrary the Obama administration’s mandate is. Americans today clearly agree with America’s founders: the federal government’s bureaucrats are not qualified to decide what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.'”

(See also the interview by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online with Tyndale head Mark Taylor.)

* On Sept. 28, a federal district judge in Missouri dismissed the lawsuit filed by a different business, O’Brien Industries, a Catholic-owned collection of companies involved in exploration, mining, and processing. Among other things, the federal judge ruled that the mandate does not interfere with Frank O’Brien’s religious exercise because it doesn’t prevent him from worshipping as he chooses, educating his children in the faith, or taking part in the sacraments of his faith. As if religious exercise is only or mainly about worship and following rituals!

Even worse, according to University of St. Thomas law professor Robert Vischer: “if this court is correct in its analysis, then HHS could rewrite the regulations, remove any exemption for religious employers and add abortion to the list of covered services. The Catholic Church could be forced to pay for its employees’ abortions without creating a substantial burden on religious exercise for purposes of [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] . . .”

Imagine that: by this sort of legal reasoning, even requiring the Catholic Church to pay for abortions would not be a violation of religious freedom! Something’s not right with that reasoning.

See also Ed Whelan, “Aggressive Decision Against Religious Liberty,” Bench Memos, National Review Online, Oct. 2.

Additional Resource: “Options for Non-Exempt Employers under PPACA,” a memo from the National Catholic Bioethics Center on Health Care and the Life Sciences, outlines and analyzes four choices open to employers with moral objections to the mandate but who are not exempt. None of them are very satisfactory.