Sotomayor Grants Nuns A Reprieve

[freedombecki]

On her way to becoming the first Supreme Court justice to lead the Times Square New Year's Eve countdown, Sonia Sotomayor signed a last-minute stay on the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate for a Catholic organization.

Denver's Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged argued that the Act's compromise for religious nonprofits that did not want to pay for birth control coverage for their employees was not enough, and that signing the certification form authorizing a third party insurer to offer contraception would still violate their religious beliefs. Not signing the form would result in fines of an estimated $1.1 million. A federal district court denied the nuns' motion on December 27, so it was left to the Tenth Circuit Court's chief justice -- Sotomayor -- to either order a stay or leave the nuns to face the ACA as written when it became law today...

..Two for-profit companies' arguments against the contraceptive mandate on religious freedom grounds will be heard by the Supreme Court in March, but, as non-religious entities that happened to be run by religious people, they were not included in the ACA's exemption.

The government has until 10 am Friday to respond to Sotomayor's order. Justice Sotomayor Grants Last-Minute Contraception Mandate Stay, Rings in New Year - The Wire

The foregoing may or may not be related to this order from Rome in 2012:

Vatican Orders Crackdown On U.S. Nun Association

-- The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

An American archbishop was appointed to oversee reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs -- including approving speakers -- and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual. Vatican Orders Crackdown On U.S. Nun Association

Which poses an interesting question. If Sotomayor is a catholic, she will have to weigh burning in hell for eternity or excommunication. Not using hyperbole here actually. Those are the rules and I didn't make them.

So in the privacy of her thoughts on these pivotal social issues, Sotomayer, if catholic, will be thinking about her catechism vs current trends of the day.

Just something fun to discuss I guess.

Also, I think personally she should be reprimanded or impeached for showing up at Times Square as some sort of celebrity. US Supreme Court Justices must always maintain a public distance from any type of social events that might appear that they are biased. Kicking up her heels at a bacchanalic drunken celebration in public, featuring sex idols like Miley Cyrus and other Los Angeles fame-degenerates might send a message to the public that their Justices are biased.

If any of you have seen Mike Judge's classic "Idiocracy", Sotomayor appearing in public dancing like a Los Vegas stage girl is a very disturbing harbinger of what's to come.

I'm not being old fashioned or prudish. We have sound reasons for preserving the different branches of government in the ways they were intended to be preserved. Our founding fathers weren't a bunch of idiots who just slapped this stuff together. Bringing indignity and public displays of bias to the High Court is and should be an impeachable offense. Sotomayor was way out of line and at the very least I hope her colleagues are chilly to her at the cafeteria. When you are sworn in as a US Supreme Court Justice, there are certain sacrafices you understand that you make in order to hold that Office. Apparently that memo never made it to Sotomayor's desk..

Sotomayor's job is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. She did exactly that.

The part she upheld was the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is an occasion in which much of the Affordable Care Act is not Constitutional, but the Supreme Court let it go because it is a Tax, and it acknowledged it cannot correct Congress on passing a Tax to fund its laws, but it also noted there would be instances of judicial dispute that the Congress would have to correct.

Notice, the Chief Justice in his notations referred to the Legislative Branch, and not the Executive Branch to make the corrections.

Sotomayor did her job to the letter of the law.

All else is dross.