Prominent U.S. bishops praised the HHS announcement on Friday as a "return to common sense."
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. bishops' religious liberty committee, said in a statement that the new rule "recognizes that the full range of faith-based and mission-driven organizations, as well as the people who run them, have deeply held religious and moral beliefs that the law must respect."
"We welcome the news that this particular threat to religious freedom has been lifted," they stated.
The Becket Fund, a religious freedom law firm that defended the Little Sisters of the Poor in court against the mandate, praised the "common sense, balanced rule," but added that the litigation is ongoing in mandate cases.
In the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor against the mandate at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court in a rare move in the middle of the case ordered both the plaintiffs and the government to submit briefs detailing if, and how a solution could be crafted that provided for cost-free coverage outlined in the HHS mandate, while at the same time maintaining the religious freedom of the non-profits that sued the government.
In May of 2016, the Court vacated the federal circuit court decisions on the mandate, ordered the federal government not to fine the plaintiffs, and instructed all parties to come to a solution that provided the contraception coverage while respecting the religious freedom of the plaintiffs. The cases are currently still at the federal circuit court level.
"14 or 15 months later" after the Supreme Court asked for a solution, "what we see today is really the resolution of that process," Rienzi said.
With the HHS announcement, the government now "admits the prior version of the mandate broke the law," Rienzi said, referring to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Under the 1993 law, the federal government must not substantially burden one's deeply-held religious beliefs unless it establishes that to do so is in its "compelling interest" and is the "least-restrictive means" of fulfilling that interest.
The government essentially admitted on Friday that there were indeed less-restrictive means of ensuring cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-causing drugs than forcing the non-profits to comply with the mandate through the "accommodation," Rienzi said.
"I assume those lawyers at DOJ will cooperate and go into the courtrooms and admit that the federal government broke the law, and that the Little Sisters and other groups are entitled to a final injunction to give them lasting protection against this kind of treatment," he said.
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Also on Friday, the Department of Justice announced a religious freedom guidance that was ordered by President Trump in his May 4 executive order on religious freedom.
The 25-page guidance outlines religious freedom protections in existing federal law that federal departments and agencies are to incorporate into their functions. It states that "Religious liberty is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a sacred place. It also encompasses religious observance and practice."
The guidance is significant and establishes solid protections for religious freedom at the federal level, Professor Robert Destro of the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law told CNA.
"We've never had anything this far-reaching before," he said, noting that the guidance puts religious freedom on the level of freedom of speech.
It also takes principles of religious freedom and applies them to many federal levels, Destro said.
For instance, U.S. attorneys at the Department of Justice in litigation must "conform all the arguments that the government is making across the country" to the religious freedom principles outlined in the guidance, he said.