As a non-profit, church based employer, all they need do to exempt themselves from providing contraception coverage for their employees under the Affordable Care Act is file paperwork identifying themselves as such; but the Little Sisters of the Poor are objecting to the paperwork requirement. They are arguing that, if they comply with the Obama administration's filing requirements, their employees will then be able to purchase contraception coverage on their own which, they say, will make them complicit in providing the very birth control they object to for religious reasons.
Their fight has reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. On Tuesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees the 10th Circuit Court, temporarily blocked the White House from enforcing their paperwork requirement.
The Obama administration claims that the order has "no legal basis to challenge the self-certification requirement." The order must make a choice: file for the available contraception exemption and provide health care coverage for their employees or refuse to provide coverage and pay a non-compliance tax penalty.
In a brief filed on Friday, the nuns wrote: "The Little Sisters...cannot execute the form because they cannot deputize a third party to sin on their behalf." If they do not sign, they "face ruinous fines for their religious refusal to sign the forms" the cost of which would be a burden on their right to exercise their religion as they see fit.
So, a group of nuns is basically fighting paperwork for religious reasons. Paperwork? Really?
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