The Trump administration protects Christians. The Biden administration targeted Christians. Policies change from one president to the next, but our constitutional rights don’t.
For example, Biden’s administration mandated that Christian businesses and healthcare organizations must violate their religious beliefs by paying for and performing harmful “transgender” surgeries, procedures, counseling, and treatments.
A group called the Christian Employers Alliance (CEA) pushed back against this mandate. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit on CEA’s behalf against the Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Office of Civil Rights in HHS to block the mandate’s enforcement.
CEA’s lawsuit argued that the EEOC was misinterpreting the word “sex” in federal anti-discrimination employment law to include “gender identity.” Religious businesses or healthcare providers would have broken the law had they refused to provide “transgender” services.
During the last year of Joe Biden’s term in office, a federal court permanently blocked enforcement against CEA. The court contended the EEOC’s interpretation of federal law violates CEA’s sincerely held religious beliefs without satisfying strict scrutiny under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act — a law Senator Chuck Schumer introduced in 1993.
The Biden administration also owed CEA $210,000 to settle the lawsuit. ADF announced on Tuesday that a court finalized an agreement by the EEOC to allow this group of Christians to conduct business as Christians.
“The employers we represent believe that God purposefully created humans as either male or female,” said Matt Bowman, ADF senior counsel and director of Regulatory Practice. “It would violate their religious beliefs and free speech, and threaten workplace safety and privacy, to force them to accept and promote gender ideology.”
Photo credit: By ajay_suresh – Woodward & Lothrop Service Warehouse, CC BY 4.0, link
