I’m pleased to highlight that the Ethics and Public Policy Center (the institution I head) has today filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in support of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the other religious nonprofits who are challenging the legality of the Obama administration’s so-called “accommodation” on its HHS contraceptive mandate.

As I’ve explained, all four of the federal appellate courts that have rejected challenges to the HHS mandate accommodation have badly botched the simple threshold substantial-burden inquiry under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and all but one of them have therefore declined to reach the further question whether the accommodation can satisfy RFRA’s test of strict scrutiny: that is, whether the government has shown that imposing the accommodation on the challengers (1) furthers a compelling governmental interest, and (2) does so via the means that are least restrictive of religious liberty.

EPPC’s brief addresses the badly flawed analysis of the one court that did reach the strict-scrutiny question, the D.C. Circuit. EPPC explains that the government cannot satisfy either prong of RFRA’s strict-scrutiny test, and that the “dilution of settled strict-scrutiny standards that the Government advocates … would establish a dangerous precedent that, applied in other contexts, would gravely threaten fundamental constitutional rights.”

I’ll present EPPC’s arguments in more detail in later posts. For now, let me offer my deep thanks to EPPC’s great team of lawyers from the Los Angeles-based law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson (where I practiced years ago): Daniel P. Collins, Zachary Briers, and Ankur Mandhania.