Violating Conscience Rights Costs California $1.4 Million

It’s costing the state of California $1.4 million for its insistence that it could, without penalty, violate the conscience rights of several churches.

Officials with the ADF have issued a statement that the state is paying that amount to cover the attorneys’ fees of the congregations.

The disputes involved two lawsuits and four churches, and now two federal courts have issued separate rulings that the First Amendment protects the churches’ rights to decline elective abortion coverage in their health insurance plans.

Leftists and abortion promoters across the nation, including some individuals now in the highest ranks of Joe Biden’s administration, repeatedly have tried to make such coverage – and premiums – mandatory as a benefit to the nation’s profitable abortion industry.

Because of the courts’ rulings on the disputes, the state has agreed to pay the attorneys’ fees.

The churches involved were Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego area and, in a second case, Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch.

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The four congregations fought the state’s demand that they pay for abortion coverage in their insurance policies.

Both court rulings said the U.S. Constitution protects the churches’ freedom to operate according to their religious beliefs, which include their belief in the sanctity of unborn lives.

“The government can’t force a church or any other religious employer to violate their faith and conscience by participating in funding abortion,” said lawyer Jeremiah Galus.

“For years, California officials, in collaboration with Planned Parenthood, have unconstitutionally targeted faith-based organizations. This is a significant victory for the churches we represent, the conscience rights of their members, and other religious organizations that shouldn’t be ordered by the government to violate some of their deepest faith convictions.”

The cases generated the discovery that in state emails, the California Department of Managed Health Care ordered the abortion coverage “in response to specific demands from Planned Parenthood. Those demands asked agency officials to implement a ‘fix’ requiring the health plans of religious organizations to include coverage for abortion, regardless of moral or conscientious objections and despite state recognition up to that point that religious groups shouldn’t be subject to such requirements.”

The report explained it was revealed that the abortion industry giant “threatened to promote its own legislative ‘solution’ if the administrative agency didn’t act, so DMHC issued its mandate in 2014,” the report said.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although millions of American parents send their precious children off to public school every day, imagining their kids’ days will be filled with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, sports and music, they’re not only in for a shock – but for total BETRAYAL. Today’s “public” (government) schools have become far-left ideological, political and religious indoctrination centers aimed at reprogramming and transforming America’s children.

Kids are being taught to HATE their own country and to see themselves and their parents as racists – or victims of racists. They are sexualized and corrupted, and many are groomed into the dark LGBT world, with almost 6,000 schools prohibiting parents from even hearing about their child’s transgender “transition.” In between all the far-left indoctrination and sexual corruption, teachers take time to scare children to death about the near-term end of life on earth due to “catastrophic climate change.” Another lie. But it’s all classic Marxism/communism, with even the “3 R’s” – reading, writing and arithmetic – now being corrupted with “woke,” “1984”-style madness.

Perhaps never has the true threat of today’s U.S. public school system been exposed as in the sensational April issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE GREATEST BETRAYAL: How Marxism and madness have taken over America’s public school system.” Whistleblower is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.

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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.

Related:

• Extremist Left-Wing Coastal States Led By California Forming “Abortion Alliance” To protect “Right” To Murder Unborn Babies (Video)
• Why Haven’t You Left California?
• California Moves To Bully The Rest Of The Nation With Its LGBT Ideology
• Why Are Hundreds Of Thousands Moving From California To The Interior West?
• Evil Democrats Argue In Favor Of Letting Babies Who Survive Abortion Die (Video)

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