Obama administration refuses to enforce federal law protecting freedom of conscience

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Casey Mattox regarding the results of an investigation conducted by the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The investigation was in response to formal complaints filed by Life Legal Defense Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom over the California Department of Managed Health Care’s decision to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans:

“The Obama administration is once again making a mockery of the law, and this time in the most unimaginable way. Churches should never be forced to cover elective abortion in their insurance plans, and for 10 years the Weldon Amendment has protected the right to have plans that do not include coverage for abortion on demand. But the state of California has ordered every insurer, even those insuring churches, to cover elective abortions in blatant violation of the law. The administration’s refusal to enforce this law continues its pattern of enforcing laws it wants to enforce, refusing to enforce others, and inventing new interpretations of others out of whole cloth. We will continue to defend churches from this clear violation of the First Amendment and federal law and call on Congress to hold the Department of Health and Human Services accountable.”