How Five Religious Schools Challenged Obamacare to Protect Life

In Acts 5, the disciples were preaching the Gospel after an angel let them out of prison. The high priest questioned them, then demanded that they not teach in Jesus’ name. The apostles’ response? “We must obey God rather than men.”

The disciples stood firm in living and speaking according to the truth of the Gospel, even when men instructed them not to do so.

This isn’t unlike how some religious colleges and universities have faced human institutions requiring them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs about the sanctity of life.

Under HHS regulations adopted pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as Obamacare), employers with more than 50 employees were required to provide life-ending contraception—something that Christian universities across the country couldn’t comply with.

Five such schools took the fight all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and praise God, their religious freedom was respected.

Meet the colleges that stood firm for the right to life

Each of these colleges is a religious institution, and they believe life is given by God and must be protected.

Geneva College

Geneva College is a Christian liberal arts school in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Its goal is to “equip students for faithful and fruitful service to God and neighbor” through a Christ-centered education.

From helping slaves escape through the Underground Railroad to being among the first schools to admit women to the full degree program, this college has acted in accordance with its beliefs since its founding.

One belief Geneva College holds is that life is from God and inherently valuable. To take a life, including in the womb, directly contradicts this sincerely held belief.

Southern Nazarene University

Southern Nazarene University (SNU) is a liberal arts university in Bethany, Oklahoma. Like Geneva College, SNU centers its work on Christ. The school’s mission is “to make Christlike disciples through higher education.”

SNU is called to help the needy and the least of these. The university has served others since its inception, having been merged with an orphanage and home for unwed mothers.

In accordance with its Christian faith and calling to serve, SNU believes that life is given by God and that it should be honored.

Oklahoma Wesleyan University

Oklahoma Wesleyan University (OKWU) is a Christian university in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. It holds to four pillars: primacy of Jesus Christ, priority of Scripture, pursuit of truth, and practice of wisdom. Its motto is “impacting culture with the lordship of Jesus Christ.”

The founder of the Wesleyan Methodist Church firmly believed in living out one’s faith and was determined to fight against slavery in accordance with his religious beliefs.

OKWU was born out of that denomination and still holds fast to practicing its beliefs. One of the ways it does so is working against trafficking and serving the girls who have endured it.

OKWU also believes life is inherently valuable and should be protected, in accordance with its Christian faith.

Oklahoma Baptist University

Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) was founded in 1910 by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and is a Christian liberal arts university in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

It prepares “students to pursue academic excellence, integrate faith with all areas of knowledge, engage a diverse world, and live worthy of the high calling of God in Christ.”

Integrating faith into the area of life and the unborn, the Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention declares that “[c]hildren, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.”

Mid-America Christian University

Mid-America Christian University (MACU) provides students with the environment and support to pursue their dreams. MACU’s mission is to prepare students through a Wesleyan perspective to create, collaborate, and innovate to solve local and global problems for the glory of God through Jesus Christ and the good of society.

MACU takes a head, heart, and hands approach, providing a holistic education that goes deeper than surface knowledge. What is taught and learned is related to the world beyond the classroom and prompts action in that world.

MACU believes that each human being, from the moment of conception, bears the image of God and is entitled to special respect.

The beliefs of each of these colleges permeate every aspect of the university’s respective culture, including the health insurance plans they offer students and employees.

As Christian institutions, these colleges knew they could not comply with the HHS contraceptive mandate, which could lead to the killing of the unborn. Doing so would mean acting in direct conflict with their Christian beliefs. That is why they had to take legal action.

HHS mandates coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and devices

Under Obamacare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, employers of over 50 people were required to offer a group health plan to their employees. The plan had to provide “minimum essential coverage” to the employees, which included “preventive care and screenings” for women.

In February 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized rules that said this preventive care had to include employer funding for drugs and devices that can facilitate abortion by preventing a fertilized egg from developing.

President Barack Obama and his administration offered a so-called “accommodation” for some religious nonprofit organizations that objected to the contraceptive mandate. According to the administration, these nonprofits could authorize their insurers to provide abortion-inducing drugs and devices for employees instead of offering the methods themselves.

To qualify for these “accommodations,” organizations had to sign forms stating that they were religious nonprofits and were opposed to providing these drugs and devices because of their beliefs. After the forms were signed, the organization’s insurers were allowed to pay for abortion methods for employees of the organization.

In other words, this still resulted in the violation of the sanctity of life. By signing these forms for an “accommodation,” the nonprofits were specifically enabling insurers to pay for those contraceptive methods they objected to.

These colleges could not violate their beliefs by providing abortifacients

With the Christian faith as their cornerstone, it comes as no surprise that these colleges opposed a federal healthcare mandate that forced employers—regardless of their religious or moral convictions—to provide access through their health insurance plans to abortion-inducing drugs and devices. If they refused, the colleges faced the threat of heavy financial penalties through the IRS.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) requires the federal government to meet extremely high standards if it is going to enforce a law that significantly burdens a person’s religious exercise.

Geneva College, SNU, OKWU, OBU, and MACU all alleged that requiring them to sign forms enabling insurers to pay for objectionable contraceptive methods violated RFRA, and they filed lawsuits with the help of ADF attorneys: Geneva College v. Azar and Southern Nazarene University v. Azar.

The government cannot force religious nonprofits, under the threat of substantial fines, to provide access to abortion-inducing drugs in their employee and student health plans. That violates the foundational religious convictions of these institutions, and it breaks federal law.

Religious Colleges Free to Protect Life

While these schools earned favorable rulings in separate district courts, those rulings were reversed by two separate appellate courts. ADF attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which consolidated the cases of these religious colleges with five other similar lawsuits under the case Zubik v. Burwell.

The Court did not rule on whether the HHS mandate violated RFRA, but it decided that insurers for the nonprofits could reasonably provide access to the objectionable contraceptive methods for employees without requiring signed forms from the organizations, meaning the schools would not have to be complicit in providing drugs and devices that kill the unborn.

With this knowledge, the Court sent the cases back to the lower courts “to arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitioners’ religious exercise.” 

Meanwhile, it barred the government from imposing taxes or penalties on these Christian colleges or any other religious nonprofits involved in that case for not complying with the contraceptive mandate.

Then, following the election of President Trump, HHS issued new rules dramatically expanding the religious exemption and adding a parallel exemption for objectors with sincere moral, non-religious convictions. With the legal landscape shifted, the government dropped its opposition to the schools’ claims. That set the stage for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to permanently bar enforcement of the mandate against SNU, OKWU, OBU, and MACU in May 2018, with the Western District of Pennsylvania following suit for Geneva College two months later.

Thanks to these events, Geneva College, SNU, OKWU, OBU, MACU, and other objecting religious organizations no longer have to fear massive fines for refusing to follow HHS’s contraceptive mandate. They are now able to provide health insurance to both students and employees without compromising their religious beliefs.

Every religious institution—including colleges and universities—should be able to operate according to its faith without interference by the government.

Case timelines

• May 2012: ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Geneva College alleging the HHS contraceptive mandate violated RFRA.
• September 2013: ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Oklahoma Baptist University, and Mid-America Christian University, alleging the HHS contraceptive mandate violated RFRA.
• December 2013: The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted ADF’s petition to halt enforcement of the mandate against the four Oklahoma universities. On the same day, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania halted enforcement of the mandate against Geneva College. HHS appealed both rulings.
• February 2015: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reversed the district court decision and ruled that Geneva College had not shown that HHS had violated RFRA.
• July 2015: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit reversed the district court decision and ruled the Oklahoma universities had not shown that HHS had violated RFRA. ADF appealed both circuit courts’ decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• March 2016: The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that consolidated that of Geneva College, the Oklahoma universities, and five other similar cases.
• May 2016: The U.S. Supreme Court did not decide whether the HHS mandate violated RFRA, but it sent the cases back to the lower courts “to arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitioners’ religious exercise.”
• October 2017: After the election of President Trump, HHS issued new rules dramatically expanding the religious exemption and adding a parallel exemption for objectors with sincere moral, non-religious convictions. The Department of Justice subsequently dropped its opposition to the schools’ claims.
• May 2018: The district court in Oklahoma issued an order permanently protecting the Oklahoma universities from being forced to cover drugs and devices that could kill an unborn child.
• July 2018: The district court in Pennsylvania came to the same conclusion and permanently protected Geneva College from enforcement of those aspects of the mandate that contradict its religious beliefs.