Administration lawyers argue Hobby Lobby ruling on birth control doesn’t apply to religious groups

FILE: May 22, 2013: Customers are seen at a Hobby Lobby store in Denver. (AP)

The Obama administration says faith-based nonprofits should comply with ObamaCare’s birth-control mandate because they have more leeway than the corporations that won a Supreme Court ruling on the issue last year.

Government attorneys made the argument on Thursday to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after pro-life ministry Priests for Life asked the court to reconsider a ruling it made last fall that requires religious nonprofits to object in writing to regulations that require employer health care plans to insure contraceptives, as reported by The Washington Times.

The group says the court’s decision contradicted the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, which stated closely held corporations did not have to insure contraceptives that conflicted with their owners’ beliefs, particularly morning-after pills that some equate with abortion.

The justices cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which requires the government to achieve its aims in the least restrictive way.

But the administration says nonprofits should not expect the Hobby Lobby case to bail them out, considering “the linchpin” of the high court’s ruling was the “opt-out alternative afforded to organizations such as the plaintiffs in this case.”

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Administration lawyers argue Hobby Lobby ruling on birth control doesn’t apply to religious groups

Azerbaijan targets pro-democracy groups

13 October 2014 Last updated at 00:26 By Rayhan Demytrie BBC Central Asia correspondent Azerbaijan currently chairs the Council of Europe, a decision that has angered the country’s critics “We are the last of the Mohicans,” says Leila Alieva. “First the government weakened the opposition, then targeted independent media, and now us – the NGOs.”

Her research institute, the Centre for National and International Studies in Azerbaijan. is one of dozens of pro-democracy non-governmental organisations under investigation by the Azeri authorities.

And the crackdown is taking place as oil-rich Azerbaijan chairs Europe’s leading pro-democracy institution, the Council of Europe.

In most cases the authorities have frozen bank accounts or launched tax inspections, forcing NGOs that received foreign grants to suspend projects.

Other organisations include Transparency International, Irex, National Endowment for Democracy and Oxfam.

So far Ms Alieva has managed to escape prosecution. But many of her peers have been less fortunate.

Azerbaijan is a key European energy partner and Western oil companies have boosted its economic growth Torn apart

In recent months, the pressure on the government’s critics has intensified.

Two prominent human rights activists, Leyla Yunus and Rasul Jafarov, were arrested in late July. They had been compiling a list of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners.

Their names have since been added to the document.

Rasul Jafarov (R) took part in Sing for Democracy protests during the 2012 Eurovision song contest

The list records 98 individuals in detention, among them human rights activists, opposition members, journalists and bloggers.

The charges against them range from espionage and drugs and weapons possession to hooliganism and tax evasion.

Mrs Yunus, a veteran human rights campaigner and an advocate of reconciliation with neighbouring Armenia, won one of France’s most prestigious awards, the Legion of Honour, last year.

Her husband, Arif Yunus, is a respected historian.

Both were charged with high treason.

“After 36 years of living together we are in different cells in different prisons,” Mrs Yunus wrote in a letter to her husband in late August.

“We just never would have predicted that the 21st Century would bring the repression of the 1930s,” she said.

Veteran campaigner Leyla Yunus has advocated reconciliation with neighbouring Armenia

Human Rights Watch has described the charges against the couple as “completely bogus”.

“These are the towering figures of civil society, who we felt were more or less untouchable. But apparently no-one is untouchable in Azerbaijan. At this stage all critical civil society is pretty much exterminated,” says Georgi Gogia, the group’s senior researcher in the Caucasus.

The Azeri government denies the charges are politically motivated.

“The rule of law is guaranteed in Azerbaijan. The case of any individual relates to the specific criminal offences and has nothing to do with their political and human rights-related activities,” said Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev, in a written statement to the BBC.

Critics have frequently been targeted since pro-democracy protests in 2011 erupted on the streets of Baku, inspired by the so-called Arab Spring.

But with Azerbaijan chairing the Council of Europe, questions have been raised about its ability to respect the 47-nation organisation’s founding principles.

“It’s shocking that the chairman is basically a dictatorship using its chairmanship period this summer to arrest literally every three days all the critical minds that defend the very value of the institution,” says Gerald Knauss, who heads the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative (ESI).

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev addresses the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in June

Azerbaijan’s chairmanship may have hurt the Council’s reputation, the secretary-general’s spokesman Daniel Holtgen concedes.

However, he says: “Our member states want us to engage and not disengage with Azerbaijan. None of the member states asked to postpone or cancel Azerbaijan’s chairmanship.”

The reluctance of Council of Europe members to sanction Azerbaijan may in part be down to Europe’s relationship with the oil-rich nation as a key energy supplier and trade partner, and to multi-billion-dollar investments by Western oil companies, which have helped boost Azerbaijan’s GDP to $73.5bn (£45bn; 58bn euros) in 2013.

Fuelling protest

In September, oil giant BP celebrated the start of the Southern Gas Corridor – a $45bn project that will deliver Azeri gas directly to Europe.

Before the ceremony, which also marked BP’s 20 years of co-operation with Azerbaijan, Human Rights Watch wrote to the company’s chief executive to take a stance against the crackdown on civil rights.

BP did not respond to the letter publicly but, in a written statement to the BBC, said that it believed that the government of Azerbaijan had a primary responsibility to protect human rights and that the company was “ready to implement their guidance in this regard”.

So far, there has been little guidance from the Azeri government. It maintains that civil liberties are being respected in Azerbaijan.

Mr Hajiyev, the foreign ministry spokesman, says there are 3,000 domestic NGOs registered in the country that the government is prepared to support.

But those that receive funding from abroad use the money for “dubious purposes, to provoke disorder and instability”.

“We all know how some other countries have seriously suffered from this type of foreign intervention,” Mr Hajiyev says. “Azerbaijan is determined not to fall victim to such kinds of charity.”

Leila Alieva says that in targeting pro-democracy NGOs and other critical voices in the country the authorities wanted to avoid scenarios similar to Ukraine’s Euromaidan movement that toppled the Yanukovych government earlier this year.

“If you look at the pictures of those arrested, they are the cream of our society. Probably in other countries they would have been appointed as ministers.”

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Azerbaijan targets pro-democracy groups

Holness: Resist attempts to muzzle civil society groups

OPPOSITION Leader Andrew Holness yesterday called on Jamaicans to resist any attempt by the Government to muzzle or regulate civil society groups, the Opposition or anyone else who criticises their way of doing things.

“Recently we noticed a trend whereby civil society is being attacked by the Government (and) the most recent was a resolution seeking to further regulate civil society,” Holness told guests at the Rotary Club of Kingston luncheon at the Jamaica Pegasus in Kingston.Holness, in an apparent reference to the recent stand-off between Youth and Culture Minister Lisa Hanna and rights group Jamaicans for Justice over the need to address various issues relating to children in custody, said it is dangerous for democracy and the first step in trying to create a totalitarian mindset.“If civil society [groups] cannot speak their mind or criticise the Government without fear [and] that Government uses its authority in legislation to indirectly muzzle them… this will effectively lead to a breakdown in our democratic traditions,” Holness said.Holness, who accused the Government of wanting the country to follow one mindset, said although the Government has to implement austerity measures, it is always important that there are voices that will not only hold them accountable but that can also point out alternatives.Alternatives, he said, should be presented to the Government on the cutting of public sector expenditure as well as the cutting of teachers’ leave entitlement as this was not the best way to go.“Government has to be very careful that in trying to cut cost you don’t cut motivation and productivity. All it takes is for a group to become frustrated and the very results that you need for a productive labour force, you could see your education results decline,” Holness said.A better policy, he said, would be to improve the systems of accountability.“…So if the teacher has leave, make sure that leave is working to ensure that the teachers go and study subjects that are relevant to the curriculum,” he said.At the same time, Holness questioned the rationale behind the Government’s decision to put wards of the state into foster care instead of institutionalised care, as a way of cutting cost. This, Holness said, is done despite the children needing specialised attention of state institutions.” It is being done because it is cheaper to send children into foster care than it is to keep them into institutionalised care,” he said.Meanwhile, the Opposition leader said while austerity measures have to be applied, the application can be like a knife.“In the hands of a butcher it will kill you, [but] in the hands of a doctor it is scalpel which could save you. So we need to decide which hand has that knife,” Holness said as he questioned if what was being applied to the economy was bitter medicine or poison.

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Holness: Resist attempts to muzzle civil society groups