Two landmark religious freedom cases will be argued before the United States Supreme Court on March 25th. Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius concern the Department of Heath and Human Services mandate, under ObamaCare, that corporations provide their employees with coverage for free contraceptives, including the kind that work by causing an abortion, in their health insurance policies.

Late last month was the deadline for amicus, or friend-of-the-court briefs. These cases drew 81, two thirds of which oppose the mandate.

The federal government is arguing that, once you go into business, you don’t have freedom of religion. Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of Liberty Institute, stated, “For almost 200 years, corporations have been treated as persons able to assert rights under the constitution and statutory law.” If the decision goes against these companies, this will all change.

And there’s another case. The Little Sisters of the Poor is an order of nuns that ministers to the needy, especially the elderly. They run 30 homes across the country.    The federal government is holding firm to its position that the Little Sisters must take positive action so that coverage for contraception, sterilization procedures, and morning-after-pills which often work by causing abortions, are all provided for in the Little Sisters’ employees’ health insurance policies. Since the Little Sisters can’t do this, being nuns and all, their order faces ruinous fines.  So they, along with nearly 500 Catholic non-profits, have gone to court to stop this edict and    their case is at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court has wisely halted the fines until the case goes through the legal system.

Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote about this case recently in a column that addresses  the divide between “the people,” and “Washington.”  In her Wall Street Journal piece, entitled “Meanwhile, Back in America…” Ms. Noonan writes of the administration’s digging in its heels against religious liberty with this HHS Mandate:

“Everyone who says that would never happen in the past is correct. It never, ever would have under normal American political leadership, Republican or Democratic. No one would’ve defied religious liberty like this.” Then, she writes: “The state doesn’t tell religious groups to do it their way or they’ll be ruined. You don’t tell the Little Sisters to bow down to you.”

Contraception has been available for 40-plus years. It’s forbidden by Catholic doctrine and controversial among some Protestants. But they’re being told by government to get over it. Over the years, contraception has become mainstream and the state has accepted it as routine medical care. But, the Left wants to force the religious, who still oppose it, to violate their faith to conform.

Peggy Noonan is on target when she laments these and other actions by the state that are “breaking bonds of trust between government and the people.” We should pray for these cases.