A full-page ad in The New York Times protesting the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling June 30 is being sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog representing over 20,000 nonbelieving members. It’s expected to run in the front news section Thursday, July 3.
Featuring an arresting portrait of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, whose motto was “No Gods — No Masters,” the ad criticizes the “all-male, all-Roman Catholic majority” on the Supreme Court for putting “religious wrongs over women’s rights.”
FFRF had previously submitted a friend of the court brief written by noted First Amendment scholar Marci Hamilton, urging the Supreme Court to declare the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) unconstitutional. Christian entrepreneurs running large chains challenged the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, contending their corporate “religious rights” were violated under RFRA if their women employees chose forms of contraception the company owners disapproved of because of their religion.
“Allowing employers to decide what kind of birth control an employee can use is not, as the Supreme Court ruled, an ‘exercise of religion.’ It is an exercise of tyranny. Employers should have no right to impose their religious beliefs upon workers,” reads the ad.
“Dogma should not trump our civil liberties.”
FFRF has taken the lead in calling for the repeal of RFRA.
“None of our civil rights, established after decades and decades of struggle and education, will be safe until RFRA is overturned,” commented Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. She called the Supreme Court decision “outrageous and untenable.”
