A leading Bible publisher will take on the Obama HHS mandate on Monday in court. Tyndale House Publishers, which publishes Bibles and other Christian books and multimedia, filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month against it.
Tyndale House is one of the world’s largest privately held Christian publishers of books, Bibles, and digital media, but it is apparently not religious enough to meet the narrowly-drawn pot-out the Obama administration placed in the HHS mandate.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House filed a lawsuit and said it is subject to the mandate because Obama administration rules say for-profit corporations are categorically non-religious, even though Tyndale House is strictly a publisher of Bibles and other Christian materials. Tyndale is owned by the non-profit Tyndale House Foundation, a Christian group which provides grants to help meet the physical and spiritual needs of people around the world.
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman will engage in oral arguments Monday asking for a court order to stop enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against Tyndale. The hearing in Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius is the first in the publisher’s Oct. 2 lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” said Bowman. “For the government to say that a Bible publisher is not religious is alarming. It demonstrates how clearly the Obama administration is willing to disregard the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom to achieve certain political purposes. For that reason, we are asking the court to halt this mandate.”
The publisher is subject to the mandate because Obama administration rules say for-profit corporations are categorically non-religious, even though Tyndale House is strictly a publisher of Bibles and other Christian materials and is primarily owned by the non-profit Tyndale House Foundation. The foundation provides grants to help meet the physical and spiritual needs of people around the world. The mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties. Tyndale House specifically objects to covering abortifacients.
On July 27, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys obtained the first-ever court order against the mandate on behalf of Colorado’s Hercules Industries and the Catholic family that owns it. That order temporarily suspends the mandate only against Hercules Industries while its lawsuit goes forward in court.
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Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys are also litigating three other lawsuits against the mandate: one in Indiana on behalf of Indiana’s Grace College and Seminary and California’s Biola University; one in Pennsylvania on behalf of Geneva College and The Seneca Hardwood Lumber Company and its owners, the Hepler family; and one in Louisiana on behalf of Louisiana College. The lawsuits represent a large cross-section of Protestants and Catholics who object to the mandate.
