WOBURN, MA — Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) hails today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court as a major victory for religious liberty. It is the second pro-life decision by the Court in less than a week.
“The Court struck down the Massachusetts buffer zone last week and, today, overruled the federal mandate forcing family businesses to provide the abortion pill in their employee health plans,” explains MFI President Andrew Beckwith.
“Taken together, the Court recognized that the First Amendment affords individuals and family-owned businesses protection from activist groups like Planned Parenthood and from overreaching government bureaucrats,” added Beckwith
MFI worked with other Massachusetts organizations to file a friend of the court brief in the Hobby Lobby case. Beckwith says that MFI joined this effort to prevent the government from forcing people of conscience to abandon their deeply held First Amendment values.
Beckwith also states that the religious freedoms at stake in this case are of particular relevance to Massachusetts, where colonists used corporate charters and companies to pursue the free exercise of religion.
The brief, filed by MFI and others, argued that “the best of our legal heritage favors constitutional recognition of religious freedom exercised by corporations and associations.”
MFI notes that this ruling will allow people of faith to live, work and run their businesses consistently with their personal religious convictions free from crippling government fines. The decision today helps reassure Americans that they will not have to check their religious freedom at the door just because they own a business.
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Massachusetts Family Institute is a non-profit research, education and public policy organization dedicated to strengthening the institution of the family and affirming the Judeo-Christian values upon which the family is based.
