Mike DeWine, the Attorney General of Ohio, and Bill Schuette, the Attorney General of Michigan, filed an amicus brief today in support of Catholic businessman John Kennedy.
Kennedy is CEO of Autocam and is represented by the CatholicVote.org Legal Defense Fund. (Learn more about the case.)
A U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids last December refused to put the HHS mandate on hold for Autocam, while Kennedy challenged its constitutionality in court. So today the attorneys general are calling on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to reverse this lower court decision and to put a stay on the HHS mandate.
They state in their filing:
Autocam and the Kennedy family assert profound religious objections to the new federal mandate that they must provide insurance covering contraceptive, abortifacient, and sterilization products and services for their employees. Despite allowing myriad exceptions for “grandfathered” and smaller businesses, the federal government will not permit John Kennedy and the Kennedy family to operate their businesses in a way consistent with their religious principles. This federal insistence on subjugating religious values to bureaucratic mandate also has extended to other employers within our States, directly contrary to the protections that [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] was meant to afford.
You can read the entire amicus brief here.