Plumbing Company Challenges HHS Mandate

Plumber brings you this news story, which we will continue to follow for you. Any stories that may be plumbing related will be featured and highlighted by us, plumbers.

HHS Mandate 

A Missouri-based plumbing-goods manufacturer becomes the most recent company to join the fight in court that is challenging the abortion pill mandate by the Obama administration.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, together with allied attorneys, filed in federal court on Monday, a case on behalf of their client, Sioux Chief Manufacturing Co., regarding the HHS mandate. The abortion pill mandate will force employers, despite their moral or religious convictions, to make available some form of insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. Heavy penalties are threatened for not complying with the mandate.

A Drain on Freedom

One of over 2,000 allied attorneys working with the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jonathan R. Whitehead, said that American citizens should have the freedom to honor God, as well as live their lives as their consciences guided them to, no matter where they were.
Whitehead further said that Americans have the freedom to transact business and live as their faith required of them. And that these were God-given freedoms. The attorney also pointed out that the First Amendment protected these same freedoms. Whitehead pointed out that the proposed mandate would be forcing citizens to ignore their faith in order to earn a living, which was unconstitutional, unnecessary and unprecedented.

Government Told to Stay out of Faith Issues

The case Sioux Chief Manufacturing vs. Sebelius has Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys as co-counsels. Kevin Theriot, the senior counsel for the attorneys group also added his voice to the issues, saying that the Constitution did not allow government to occupy itself in matters of religion by trying to decide what faith was, who the faithful were, when they could live out their faith, as well as where. Theriot said that confining faith to people’s churches or homes was not the work of the Washington bureaucrats as the freedom was not government-driven but God-given.

Kansas City-based Sioux Chief Manufacturing Co., was founded by Martin E. “Ed” Ismert, Jr. in 1975 and is one of the leading wholesalers and manufacturers of plumbing supplies and products. The business continues to be family owned and run. The members are of the Catholic faith.
Also involved in similar lawsuits against the mandate are Louisiana College, the Seneca Hardwood Lumber Company, Geneva College, Hercules Industries, Grace College and Seminary and Biola University, Tyndale House Publishers, Grote Industries and Annex Medical, all of which are part of the litigation. 

Plumber services will continue giving you updates on this case and other stories of interest to you and to Atlanta plumbing followers.