Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Another Win for Religious Freedom
Another Win for Religious Freedom
Jul 2, 2025 7:21 AM

After a long fight, West Michigan Manufacturer, Autocam Medical LLC has finally received “permanent protection” from the controversial HHS Mandate or “abortion pill mandate.” In 2013, pany was told it had ply with the mandate, despite owner John Kennedy’s and his family’s beliefs regarding the use of contraceptives and abortifacients. However, Hobby Lobby’s win in the Supreme Court last year reversed Autocam’s ruling and brought the case back to court. Yesterday, the District Court for Western Michigan guaranteed that pany will not have ply with the mandate that violates deeply held religious beliefs. The Thomas More Society, who represented Autocam, released the following:

Federal Court Rules that Michigan Firm, Autocam, Not Required to Provide Abortion Coverage

Thomas More Society Wins Lengthy Lawsuit in Defense of Religious Liberty for Christian-Owned Business

(January 6, 2015 – Kentwood, MI) The Thomas More Society has won permanent protection for Autocam Medical, LLC, protecting its religious freedom to decline to provide abortion or contraceptive group insurance coverage for employees. Yesterday concluded a long legal battle that took Autocam all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which sent the case back down to the lower courts. The District Court for the Western District of Michigan declared Autocam free from having ply with Obamacare’s so-called “abortion pill mandate,” as decreed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”).

Judge Robert J. Jonker, who initially had ruled against Autocam when the lawsuit was first filed over three years ago, now ruled that, in light of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Hobby Lobby ruling, this family-owned business may not be required “to provide its employees with health coverage for contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and related patient education and counseling to which plaintiff objects on religious grounds.”

John Kennedy, CEO of the pany, along with other family member owners of Autocam, have always held that the government has no right to require that Autocam purchase group insurance coverage, providing its employees with morally objectionable contraceptives, including abortifacients and sterilization. Prior to the government’s implementation of the controversial mandate, Autocam had specifically designed a health insurance plan with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan to exclude contraception, sterilization, abortion, and abortion-inducing drugs, in keeping with its owners’ deeply held religious beliefs.

The Kennedys faithfully embrace the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church that contraception, abortion, and sterilization are serious wrongs. The Obamacare HHS mandate tried to force Autocam’s owners to flout their deeply held religious convictions and to operate pany in a manner that they sincerely held to be gravely wrong.

“Coercing citizens to violate their conscientious religious beliefs makes a mockery of the very notion of religious freedom,” said Tom Brejcha, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Society. “We applaud this decision which honors our client’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment as well as its statutory rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and we thank Professor Patrick T. Gillen of Ave Maria Law School, our special counsel, for his help in winning this splendid result for our client, one that sets another strong precedent for the free exercise of religious faith on the part of all American citizens.”

Read the January 5, 2015 Injunction and Judgment from the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan Southern Division here.

Read the August 4, 2014 United States Supreme Court’s remand order sending the Autocam case back to the lower federal courts here.

Read additional background on the case is here.

About the Thomas More Society

The Thomas More Society is a not-for-profit, national public interest law firm whose mission is to restore respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty. Based in Chicago, the Thomas More Society defends and fosters support for these causes by providing high quality pro bono legal services from local trial courts all the way to the United States Supreme Court. www.thomasmoresociety.org

The HHS Mandate and the discussion of religious liberty has been a trending topic on the PowerBlog. Read some of those articles here. For more background on Autocam, see the various PowerBlog posts.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How to be a socially responsible investor
From : “Socially responsible investing is when you take your beliefs and values and apply them to how you invest your money. This is also known as having a ‘double bottom line,’ because not only are you looking for a profitable investment, but also one that meets certain moral criteria and that lets you sleep well at night. Your second bottom line could be moral, religious, or based on whatever Chicken Soup for the Soul principles help guide you through...
France urges actions against Iran
France’s foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said that Iran’s move to resume its nuclear activities could spark a “major international crisis,” increasing the pressure on Tehran to return to the negotiating table or risk facing sanctions. France is urging European negotiators to propose a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s council of governors. “If the Iranians still do not accept what the council of governors propose, then the munity must turn to the Security Council” and “we will see what...
Faith and works
The issue of the federal regulation of non-profit groups, including churches, has meshed with a number of other questions, including allegations of government discrimination against faith-based groups. Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, writes of an attack on funding for faith-based initiatives in the New York Times as “typical of what’s been happening in the press and in Congress. Year after year, a Senate minority blocks votes on faith-based legislation. They demand that ministries not ‘discriminate’ by hiring only...
Al Gore launches network
Al Gore’s new Current TV network seeks to be “the television home page for the Internet generation,” the former vice-president said. With its debut today, Current TV seeks to be a more hip and cutting-edge form of presenting the news. “I think the reality of the network will speak for itself,” Gore told reporters. “It’s not intended to be partisan in any way and not intended to be ideological.” Sure thing Mr. Gore. Of course a network you are debuting...
Culture of litigation infects the Church
The current issue of Christianity Today magazine examines the lack of discipline in evangelical churches, and is presenting the themed articles in a series on its website. The litigious nature of American culture has e one of the great contributing factors to the decline of church discipline. A brief article by Ken Sande, an attorney who serves as president of Peacemaker Ministries, testifies to this reality. In “Keeping the Lawyers at Bay,” Sande writes that one way bat the tendency...
Dead man’s hand
On this date in 1876, Wild Bill Hickok was killed, shot dead from behind by Jack McCall while playing poker. He held a pair of aces & a pair of 8s, forever giving bination the nickname “Dead Man’s Hand.” Poker e a long way since then, ing a global multi-million dollar industry. There’s a good discussion over at World Magazine Blog, asking where parents should “draw the line,” given the rising popularity of poker among youth. This story from CBS’s...
Oil prices: Up, up, and away
Crude oil prices have reach a record high $62 per barrel. Combined with Time Warner’s worse-than-expected recent earnings stocks dropped today as investors waited uneasily for the government’s latest petroleum inventory report. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $62.40, up 51 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline rose more than a cent to $1.7945 a gallon while heating oil gained a cent to $1.7350 a gallon. As American refineries operate at nearly 100% capacity, prices at...
Antiochian orthodox to quit NCC
The terminal politicization of the National Council of Churches has led a major Orthodox jurisdiction to throw in the towel. The Antiochian Orthodox Church, meeting for its bi-annual convention in Dearborn, Mich., has “voted overwhelmingly” to leave the ecumenical body led by Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democrat congressman. The news has been posted on Touchstone Magazine’s Mere Comments blog, and was phoned in by a correspondent for Ancient Faith Radio who was on the scene in Dearborn. Metropolitan Philip...
Fruitful math
Here’s a view of procreation that doesn’t line up with the UN-sponsored “World Population Day”. In the midst of a discussion about a Jewish tradition mandating that each couple has at least one male and one female child, Bryan Caplan at EconLog writes, I’m on the record in favor of having more kids. I believe that, in most cases, both individuals and society would be better off if families had three or four. A lot of people have small families...
Exchange on globalization and labor
From last week’s McLaughlin Group (July 30), an exchange between Pat Buchanan and Mort Zuckerman on the AFL-CIO split: MR. BUCHANAN: There’s no doubt it is a blow to the Democrats. And what Eleanor said is very important earlier. The future of the labor movement is in service workers and it’s government workers, John, because the industrial unions are dying. We are exporting all of their jobs overseas, whether it’s textile or steel or (atomic?) workers or auto workers. All...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved