In 2015, the Supreme Court heard the case of Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns seeking to receive an accommodation from healthcare regulations that, they argued, impinged on their religious freedom. The Supreme Court issued no definitive ruling, but in 2017 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agreed to grant the nuns the same exemptions granted to churches—citing the 1993 Religious Freedom Reformation Act (RFRA) as requiring such a decision. But the governments of New Jersey and Pennsylvania then sued HHS on the grounds that only courts, not regulatory bodies, could create such exemptions. The Supreme Court will now hear this case as well. Howard Slugh comments:
The states’ novel interpretation of RFRA is contrary to the statute’s intent and text and would harm religious Americans. Under the existing understanding of RFRA, agencies must independently determine if their regulations violate the law. . . . Under the interpretation of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, however, RFRA does not require agencies to perform such reviews. In fact, they are forbidden from conducting them unless some other statute empowers them to do so.
If the Supreme Court rules for the states, it will result in unnecessary lawsuits—lawsuits that could have been avoided though cooperation between agencies and religious groups. Agencies will inevitably write rules that inadvertently burden religious Americans’ faith. Under the current rules, they can grant exemptions once they’re informed of the conflict. However, if the states prevail, those agencies can’t act until they are sued and a court finds that their regulation violated RFRA. Such a process would be costly and time-consuming and would create unnecessary acrimony.
Jewish Americans perform many religious practices that government actors may not know about. We should therefore support the commonsense understanding of RFRA, which would allow government agencies to work cooperatively with the Jewish community to ensure that such practices are protected.
Read more on Jewish Press: https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/why-jews-should-be-supporting-nuns/2020/01/31/