WASHINGTON (BP)—Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University are appealing to the Supreme Court in challenging the Obamacare mandate to provide insurance coverage encompassing abortion-inducing drugs.

HBU and ETBU in conjunction with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty along with Westminster Theological Seminary filed a petition July 8 with the high court in response to a June 22 ruling by a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the mandate did not and, likely, would not “substantially burden their religious exercise.”

In all, 56 cases involving 140 nonprofit plaintiffs have been filed against the mandate, according to the Becket Fund. Among various cases in the news is a last-minute temporary injunction granted to Little Sisters of the Poor from facing enforcement of the mandate in January 2014.

Two other Baptist entities—GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention and Truett-McConnell College in Georgia—are involved in a separate challenge (GuideStone v. Sebelius), joined by Reaching Souls International, an Oklahoma-based missions organization. A federal district judge’s injunction blocking enforcement of the mandate against the three plaintiffs is in force.

HBU, ETBU, Westminster and four other plaintiffs contended in an October 2012 lawsuit against the mandate (also called the HHS mandate and Affordable Care Act mandate) that they should receive the same consideration as churches under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the federal Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA).

A federal district judge ruled in the seven plaintiffs’ favor in December 2013. The three-judge appeals panel of the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, however, referenced challenges to the mandate in federal district courts and acknowledged that the lower courts had cited RFRA in ruling against abortifacient coverage mandated for faith-based institutions. But the panel disagreed, writing, “Because the plaintiffs have not shown and are not likely to show that the requirement substantially burdens their religious exercise under established law, we reverse.”

Robert Sloan, HBU president, said in a Becket Fund news release July 8, “We didn’t go looking for this fight. But here we stand and can do no other. We cannot help the government or anyone else provide potentially life-threatening drugs and devices. The government has many other ways to achieve its goals without involving us. It ought to pick one of those and let us go back to educating our students.”

Diana Verm, legal counsel with the Becket Fund, also said July 8, “The Supreme Court should step in and tell the federal government that separation of church and state is a two-way street. The state should not be able to take over parts of the church—including these religious ministries—just so it has an easier way of distributing life-terminating drugs.”

Sloan has noted that faith-based schools and organizations have been recognized by the government historically as parachurch institutions and afforded the same consideration as churches in matters of conscience and law. But only houses of worship can opt out of compliance with the ACA mandate requiring all employer insurance policies provide contraceptive and abortifacient coverage—an untenable proposition, the plaintiffs argued.

The plaintiffs are arguing that though their institutions serve a different purpose than churches, their underlying convictions and subordination to scriptural authority—as is often declared in their governing documents—is no less binding on how they conduct business. Therefore, the government’s distinction between entities, they argued, is arbitrary and an affront to people of conscience.

One hopeful development in the challenges to the mandate, Sloan has said, is the Hobby Lobby case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the family-owned arts and craft retail chain could opt out of the contraceptive mandate because of the owners’ religiously held convictions. At the same time, however, Sloan has acknowledged that precedent is not in favor of the HBU, ETBU, Westminster appeal as the Fifth Circuit decision concurs with rulings in similar cases from appellate courts across the nation.

The Supreme Court is likely to consider all of the petitions in late September or early October, the Becket Fund said in its July 8 release. If any of the petitions are granted, the case would be argued and decided before the end of the court’s term in June 2016. 

For HBU, ETBU and the other religious institutions, failure to win their cases would force them to violate their conscience and provide the offending coverage; defy the mandate and pay “onerous” penalties; or partner with a third party insurance provider to offer the contraceptive coverage.

All three, Sloan has said, are unacceptable. Disregarding their Christian convictions is not an option.

Paying the fine also is out of the question as the non-compliance penalty of $100 per employee per day would total $12 million and $8 million a year, respectively, for HBU and ETBU.

“If we exercise our religious freedom, the penalties could put us out of business,” Sloan said.

And asking a third party to provide the coverage still makes the school culpable for the objectionable coverage, Sloan said, noting that the university’s insurance provider is Guidestone Financial Resources, the Southern Baptist insurance provider also fighting the legal battle with the Obama administration over the mandate.

Currently, as in other cases, a temporary injunction is shielding HBU, EBTU and the other five plaintiffs from enforcement of the mandate.

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Across town, the annual Gay Pride parade was setting attendance records. The usual assortment of flamboyant costumes swirled around revelers celebrating the previous day’s victory over an ancient institution they’d found confining. One straight couple said they brought their toddlers, Fox and Bear (no kidding), so they could understand both freedom and homosexuality. It occurred to me that this family may have not been to town since the Occupy protests a couple of years back. 

About five miles down the road, in the little church my mother attends, Clan Ledbetter was gathered with other great houses to wed two of our children—a man and a woman. The preacher was a family friend, and he reminded us all of God’s first institution, the temporal picture of the timeless relationship between Christ and his church. He preached the gospel to the marrying couple and to the witnesses. “God hears our commitments,” he told us, and he takes them seriously. We nodded in solemn joy at the occasion and the familiar words. The short ceremony proceeded in the pattern familiar to us all, and we smiled as the exuberant newlyweds promenaded down the church aisle.

After greeting them in the foyer, we walked into a small fellowship hall for cake, mixed nuts, chalky white wedding mints and punch made from ginger ale and lime sherbet—staples of Baptist weddings for a generation. But the food wasn’t the point as we gathered in rounds of 10 by family groups to catch up and tease and grin indulgently as a new generation strutted and crowed. We saw the newlyweds off with a barrage of bubbles and spent a half hour preparing the fellowship hall for the next day’s church activities.

Later that day, my side of the family convened at Mom and Dad’s for an annual cookout. The cool evening and blessed lack of mosquitos led us to linger until dark as we talked about our own marriages, 61 years old, 39 years old, 30 years old, two years old and 10 months old. The youngsters can’t imagine my parents’ marriage of over six decades or even mine of nearly four. But they also can’t imagine Dad without Mom or Pop without Granny. Our laughter and wild exaggerated stories taught the newer couples, and the single kids, something as timeless as the lessons Ledbetters and Shults and Reeds and Tunes taught their kids a century back—one man, one woman for life; same as it ever was.

No one mentioned that day the ruling by Justice Kennedy’s court the day before. Maybe I was the only one thinking of it in the background of more important things we said and heard and did that day. But my heart was full for those hours of comfort and peace; in stark contrast of the previous day’s flurry of reading legal opinions; poring over Twitter for comments, bluster and trash talk; and strategery. I was stirred up Friday, as were many of you, and my mind seethed with strong emotions in response to cultural madness, a lot of questions not answerable by the wisdom of this age. But I spent the next morning fishing, that afternoon with family in the broadest sense and that evening with those I’ve known since birth, theirs or mine.

I got my answer. There is no ultimate joy or satisfaction in man’s rebellion against God or his institutions—my rebellion or others’. But there is power in young people hearing the counsel and the testimonies of those who’ve gone before. There is significance in wrinkled and scarred relationships that say convincingly that love and commitment outlast the new-car smell of honeymoons and shower gifts. They may not believe that it “gets better,” to borrow a phrase from the other team, but they have seen that doing the right things, generally, produces something worth passing along to kids they will add to the circle a July or two down the road.

As citizens we will stay engaged as long as we have rights to do so. As citizens we can facilitate the rescue of some victims of our libertine society. As churches, we boldly teach the whole counsel of God to our neighbors, who will often hate to hear it. As children of God—fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters—we will teach our kin what’s right and what is worthy. There are things to mourn in the rebellion of nations against God’s clear revelation of himself. But we mourn for the lost and confused—the worshippers of creation rather than the Creator. We are not victims of wayward American law. The serenity of that Christian wedding service, and of that summer family gathering, is an answer from the unchanging and unshakable God. His children are not victims at all.