"Understanding the HHS lawsuits"

Here is a short piece I did, on the HHS lawsuits, for the Notre Dame alumni magazine.  I end with this:

In a pluralistic society governed by the rule of law, religious liberty is not absolute. And the responsibility of public authorities to the common good and public order means that balancing, trade-offs and compromise are unavoidable. At the same time, a political community like ours, with laws and a Constitution like ours, should respect and cherish religious freedom and should accommodate distinctive religious claims and obligations generously, not reluctantly.

In this case, a policy that better respects the religious mission, character and integrity of institutions like Notre Dame was and is available. For example, the government could use and expand existing federal programs, like Medicaid, to provide employees of the relatively few objecting religious institutions with preventive-services coverage. Such an approach would avoid most of the religious-freedom issues without sacrificing what the Obama Administration regards as the policy’s benefits.

Of course, to cherish religious freedom is not necessarily to welcome federal litigation. It would have been wrong for Catholic institutions to sue unnecessarily, prematurely, “for show” or to score political points. In this case, though, it would have been risky and unreasonable to delay. Political operatives of all stripes will, no doubt, try to use both the mandate and the challenges to it for their own purposes, but the decision to sue was both principled and prudent, because religious freedom is both foundational and vulnerable.