Alito wins award from Catholic law group in Maryland

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. will receive the 2014 Man for All Seasons award Thursday evening from the St. Thomas More Society of Maryland, an organization of Catholic lawyers, judges, law students and court personnel.

Catholic groups praised Alito this summer for his majority opinion in the high court’s 5-4 decision that closely held business can opt out — due to their religious objections — of a federal health insurance requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the court said imposing the requirement on closely held businesses who oppose contraception would violate the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori has praised the Hobby Lobby decision, saying it gives momentum to a separate legal challenge he has brought against the federal Affordable Care Act’s mandate as head of the Catholic Benefits Association, a Catholic employers’ cooperative.

State senator and constitutional-law professor Jamin B. “Jamie” Raskin, though an outspoken critic of the Hobby Lobby decision,” said he has no problem with Alito or any other justice receiving an award from a religious group.

“Supreme Court justices have First Amendment rights, too,” said Raskin, citing the right to association.

“He has a right to accept awards from people he wants to get awards from,” added Raskin, D-Montgomery, who teaches at American University’s Washington College of Law.  “I’m more concerned with Justice Alito’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence than what he does on the weekend.”

Alito, in his Hobby Lobby opinion, said some judges have erroneously held that RFRA does not apply to for-profit, closely held companies.

“This argument flies in the face of modern corporate law,” Alito wrote.

“For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives,” he added. “If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well.”

Alito’s opinion drew a scathing dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said the ruling would “deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA would otherwise secure.”

The high court’s decision left unanswered the extent to which nonprofits — such as charities, hospitals and schools — have a similar right to deny contraceptive coverage.

On June 4, U.S. District Judge David L. Russell in Oklahoma City issued a preliminary injunction on June 4, blocking federal enforcement of the ACA — popularly known as Obamacare — against the Catholic Benefits Association’s Catholic-owned nonprofit and for-profit businesses pending resolution of the litigation.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month ordered that the case be held in abeyance pending the appellate court’s resolution of three appeals presenting substantially the same legal question. The Denver-based 10th Circuit has scheduled oral arguments in those cases for Dec. 8.