Freakazoids Get a Slap Down

Perhaps the outrageous partisanship of the U.S. Supreme Court is inspiring a backlash among federal district and circuit court judges. They're not mincing words any more.

Charlie Pierce:

I am starting to get the impression that judges around the country are getting fed up with the overwhelming triviality with which our politics have come to deal with the very real problems that the country has. First, last week, in Missouri, a federal judge — appointed, you will note, by Poppy Bush — threw out the phony freedom-of-religion challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and gave everybody a lesson in basic don't-bring-that-weakass-shit-in-here jurisprudence while doing so....

The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [an employer's health] plan, subsidize someone else's participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs' religion.... [Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one's religion forbids, or forbids action one's religion requires; it is not a means to force one's religious practices upon others. [It] does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one's money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one's own....

In other words, Mr. Catholic Mining Company Owner, your Presbyterian janitor doesn't have to live under rules for sexytime devised by Pope Paul VI and some other long-deceased celibates.

Now, who's going to be the first federal judge to state the obvious: that if freakazoids can't stop people from using health insurance to pay for birth control, they can't stop people from using health insurance to pay for abortion, either.