Court rules for Ohio business that challenged birth control mandate

WASHINGTON — A divided appeals court panel has sided with Ohio business owners who challenged the birth control mandate under the new federal healthcare law.

The business owners are two brothers, Francis and Philip M. Gilardi, who own Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics of Sidney, Ohio, and challenged the mandate on religious grounds. They say the mandate to provide contraceptive coverage would force them to violate their Roman Catholic beliefs and moral values by providing contraceptives such as the morning-after pill for their employees.

The law already exempts houses of worship from the requirement.

The ruling Friday by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is one of several on the birth control issue, which will probably be resolved by the Supreme Court. There are at least three other rulings by federal appeals courts on the mandate: One sided with Oklahoma businesses, and two sided with the Obama administration in challenges brought by Pennsylvania and Michigan companies.

Writing for the majority, Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote that the mandate “trammels the right of free exercise — a right that lies at the core of our constitutional liberties — as protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Brown, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said that the mandate presented the Gilardis with a Hobson’s choice.

“They can either abide by the sacred tenets of their faith, pay a penalty of over $14 million and cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building,” he said, “or they become complicit in a grave moral wrong.”