Sometimes, life is full of surprises. In fact, you may find help from an unexpected source.
According to TPM, the White House and Progressives may have found an unexpected ally on the HHS decision regarding Birth Control. Wonder how Republicans will take this news?
The Reagan-appointed conservative justice authored the majority opinion in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, a critical precedent to the birth control case, decreeing that religious liberty is insufficient grounds for being exempt from laws. The Supreme Court said Oregon may deny unemployment benefits to people who were fired for smoking peyote as part of a religious tradition, seeing as the drug was illegal in the state.
“To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself,” wrote Scalia, an avowed Catholic and social conservative, in an opinion that was cosigned by four other justices.
Following, Republicans' logic, especially John Boehner's, Justice Anthony Scalia of all people had been engaged in a war on religion for decade.