CV NEWS FEED // The Catholic Benefits Association (CBA) just announced it will launch a series of crash courses for its members on how to deal with federal anti-life mandates.
In light of three new federal mandates slated to take effect in the next two months, the legal advocacy group for Catholic organizations said in an email press release that they would be conducting an in-depth study of each mandate to determine the best legal path forward for those seeking religious exemption.
“These rules are complex, often purposefully vague, and sometimes seemingly contradictory,” the release stated. “They are crafted to be hard to fight, but since 2013 CBA has secured more permanent injunctive relief for Catholic employers than all other suits combined.”
CBA will present its analysis of the mandates in a series of webinars for its members, starting next week with the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA):
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, so benign and humanistic as a Congressional Bill, rightfully gained support from our Bishops.
However, EEOC’s published implementation rule, refers to abortion on almost every one of its 256 pages. New definitions and employer required accommodations are an ideologically formed perversion of the original bill. An administrative overreach of epic proportions, compliance is impossible for employers of the Catholic faith.
As CatholicVote reported in August 2023 after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) first issued its regulation establishing the mandate, PWFA requires employers to provide coverage for their workers’ abortions by law. CBA took further issue with the EEOC’s Workplace Harassment mandate, which demands compliance with rigid inclusivity standards from every employer with over 15 employees. The religious freedom group also cites the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s new 1557 mandate on sexual orientation and gender identity, which, it points out, “is also an abortion mandate.”
The release continued:
These mandates variously attempt to ignore, deny, minimalize, or circumvent religious protections.
They redefine our Employment Practices and social interactions to implement and enforce the full range of SOGI and pro-abortion ideologies. Oversight and enforcement is based on each agency’s ideological interpretation.
The organization concluded by encouraging its members to sign up for the webinar series in order to prepare for upcoming challenges precipitated by the new federal regulations: “This tsunami of evil is unprecedented in magnitude and scope. Everyone needs to be in the fight.”
