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From the Desk of Richard Thompson,

President and Chief Counsel

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Tomorrow is the 12^th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on America and the God-given freedoms we so cherish.  We remember with anger and anguish the nearly 3,000 Americans murdered by Muslim terrorists in the name of Islam. We also remember and honor those first responders, many of whom lost their lives trying to save others.

This is also a time to remember the thousands of American soldiers who were killed, wounded or are still suffering, in the ensuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and places unknown. We honor all those who answered our Nation’s call to Arms.  We also remember the sacrifices made by their families.

In his speech from the Oval Office, given on the evening of the September 11^th attack, President George W. Bush proclaimed:

“Today, our nation saw evil — the very worst of human nature — and we responded with the best of America.” 

On this 12^th Anniversary of 9/11, let’s rededicate ourselves to the defeat of this evil. We will never forget September 11; and we must keep the flame of retribution burning until Radical Islam is wiped from the face of the Earth.

Please pray for all our men and women who are in harm’s way today in service of our Nation.

God bless America!

THOMAS MORE LAW CENTER

 

 

 

President and Chief Counsel

September 10, 2013

The following statement is posted on the Barron Industries website: “Barron Industries is a family-run organization with a strong Catholic Christian foundation. Our Guiding Principle is our faith in God. We appreciate that everyone is created equal. Our belief is that we are placed here to serve the Lord and one another with honesty and integrity. It is our collective goal to use our work, professional and personal lives to lead each other to eternal salvation.”

In keeping with this guiding principle, Barron Industries, Inc., its Chairman Paul Barron, and its President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Barron, this morning filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate.  The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Erin Mersino, the TMLC’s lead attorney on several cases the Law Center has already filed challenging the HHS Mandate, stated: “Barron Industries supports numerous Catholic charities, holds optional mass for its employees, and houses an on-site chapel.  Paul and Bruce Barron are devoted Catholic businessmen who strive to follow the mission of the Church in their daily lives, which includes their business practices.”

“It’s irrational for the Government to claim, as it has been doing in these HHS mandate cases, that a business is just a shell and can have no moral fiber, and therefore a business owner must be excluded from the protections of the First Amendment in his business practices.  The First Amendment was not enacted to strip business owners of their moral conscience or to force them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs – which is, without question, what the HHS mandate does,” said Mersino.

Barron Industries, started in 1923 by Joseph H. Barron, Sr., is a family owned and operated casting, machining, fabrication and assembly facility located in Oxford, MI, and managed today by Paul Barron and his son Bruce Barron.  Catholic Mass is regularly celebrated in the main conference room of the plant facility.  Visitors, customers and staff are openly invited to join in the services.

The guiding principle of Paul and Bruce Barron is further evidenced by their support of numerous Catholic and pro-life organizations including Right to Life of Michigan, Priests for Life, Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, Acton Institute, Knights of Malta, Ave Maria Radio and the Order of Carmelites.

Paul Barron is also a member of Legatus, the Nation’s largest organization of top Catholic business CEOs and professional leaders. Legatus calls its members to be “ambassadors for Christ” through the three key areas of a Catholic business leader’s life – Faith, Family and Business. The Thomas More Law Center is also representing the Legatus organization itself in a separate federal lawsuit.

The HHS Mandate, a set of regulations adopted by the US Department of Health and Human Services, requires employers to pay for employee health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization or pay draconian fines.

Thus, compliance with the HHS Mandate would be in direct opposition to the religious beliefs and practices of the Barron family, Barron Industries, Inc, and their Guiding Principle. Barron Industries currently employs 56 full-time employees and would be subjected to nearly 2 million dollars in fines per tax year for non-compliance under the HHS Mandate.

TMLC’s lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the HHS Mandate under First Amendment rights to the Free Exercise of Religion, Free Speech and the Establishment Clause.   It also claims that the HHS Mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The purpose of the lawsuit is to seek a court ruling that declares the HHS Mandate violates the Constitution and Federal statutes, and to permanently block its enforcement.

Named as Defendants in the lawsuit are Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; Thomas Perez, Secretary of the Department of Labor; Jack Lew, Secretary of the Department of Treasury; and their respective departments.

Richard Thompson, TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel, commented, “Using the HHS Mandate, the Obama Administration declared war on the Catholic Church.  And I applaud the Barron family as well as the many other Catholic businessmen who are standing up for their Faith. As Archbishop Charles J. Chaput stated in 2009, ‘It doesn’t matter what we claim to believe if we’re unwilling to act on our beliefs.  What we say about our Catholic faith is the easy part.  What we do with it shapes who we really are.’”

You can read the entire 39 page Federal Complaint here.

Federal District Court Judge Denise Page Hood of the Eastern District Court of Michigan, late Friday entered a summary judgment in favor of Pastor Terry Jones and his organization, Stand up America Now, against the City of Dearborn.   Judge Hood ruled that Dearborn’s ordinance requiring Pastor Jones’s organization to sign a sweeping indemnification agreement as a condition for permission to speak on public property in front of a Dearborn mosque violated Jones’s First Amendment rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expressive Association.

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of Pastor Terry Jones, associate pastor Wayne Sapp, and their organization Stand Up America Now on April 2, 2012 after the City of Dearborn demanded that they sign a “Hold Harmless” Agreement as a requirement for a special events permit for the event scheduled for April 7, 2012.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, applauded Judge Hood’s decision: “Judge Hood’s ruling upholds a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, that government cannot inhibit the expression of an idea just because some find the idea offensive.  This principle is in stark contrast to those nations ruled by Sharia law. The fact that some may find Pastor Jones a controversial public figure or object to his message is even greater reason for Dearborn officials to ensure his right to free speech was protected.  So despite the fact that Dearborn has one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in America, the City should have protected Pastor Jones’s right to free speech, not contrive a way to impede it.”

The TMLC attorney Erin Mersino who handled the case, added, “Judge Hood in her ruling clearly recognized that our clients were subject to the unbridled discretion of the City’s legal department, and that in order to exercise their constitutional rights to free speech on public property, they had to surrender many of their other civil rights.”

Mersino continued, “This requirement was not only unconscionable; it was unconstitutional.”

Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp founded Stand Up America Now for the purpose of proclaiming the Holy Bible to Muslims and educating people about the threat of Sharia law to our Nation’s fundamental principles of freedom.  As part of their outreach efforts, Jones and Sapp travel across the country speaking about Christianity at Muslim events and mosques. The proposed event scheduled for April 7, 2012 consisted of speeches and flyer distribution on a public grassy median directly across from the Dearborn Islamic Center, the largest mosque in North America.

After the lawsuit was filed, TMLC attorney Mersino, obtained a temporary restraining order from the Court which allowed Stand Up America Now to proceed with their special event without signing the “Hold Harmless” agreement. Realizing their untenable legal position, mere minutes before the court granted the order, the City withdrew its previous demand for a signed “Hold Harmless” agreement, and ignoring their own ordinance, decided to grant the permit. The TMLC nevertheless continued the case because the ordinance requiring a “Hold Harmless” agreement was still on the books.  Consequently, the City could again violate the constitutional rights not only of Pastor Jones, but also of others who may want to exercise their free speech rights in the future.

In granting the Summary Judgment in favor of Plaintiffs, Judge Hood held that Plaintiffs cannot be required to waive their right to hold the City liable for its otherwise actionable conduct as a condition of exercising their right to free speech. Additionally, Judge Hood found that the Hold Harmless agreement would require the Plaintiffs to assume legal and financial responsibility even for those activities at the event that were outside of their control, including activities of the City itself.

Previously, the TMLC successfully represented Pastor Jones and his associate Wayne Sapp in November of 2011 after they were jailed by Dearborn police for attempting to protest Jihad, Sharia Law and the radicalization of Muslims in America.  In that case, a State District Court judge ordered that they sign a ‘Peace Bond.’   However, the TMLC overturned that order on appeal.

Judge Hood’s entire 12-page ruling can be read here.

This past Friday, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a preliminary injunction banning the enforcement of the HHS Mandate in a lawsuit filed by The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  TMLC filed the lawsuit on behalf of two brothers, Shaun and Michael Willis, one a Catholic and the other a Protestant, and their family-owned law firm, Willis Law, located in Kalamazoo, MI.

The lawsuit is one of several legal challenges the TMLC has mounted on behalf of committed Christians in direct opposition to the HHS Mandate promulgated by the Obama Administration.  The HHS Mandate, which refers to a set of regulations adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, forces employers to include coverage for abortion and abortion inducing pharmaceuticals as well as related counseling and education as part of employer sponsored health care plans, regardless of any moral or religious objections that the employer may have.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center commented, “This case is about the religious freedom of Christians to peaceably practice their faith free from government coercion.  In direct violation of one of America’s founding principles, the Federal Government knowingly forces those who believe in the sanctity of human life to choose between following the law and following their conscience.”  In this particular case, the Department of Justice did not oppose TMLC’s motion for the entry of the Preliminary Injunction.

Both Shaun and Michael Willis are devout pro-life Christians with a deep religious conviction that abortion and abortifacients are gravely immoral practices which result in the destruction of innocent life.

Prior to the HHS Mandate, the Willis brothers were able to exclude coverage for abortion and abortifacients. However, these exclusions now put the Willis Brothers in violation of the HHS Mandate; a violation that would have cost them over half a million dollars in fines per year had they not obtained an injunction. The preliminary injunction now allows the Willis Brothers to continue providing health insurance to their employees that is in not in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs and conscience.

For the Willis brothers, being forced by the government to fund, promote and assist others in obtaining services which destroy innocent life is tantamount to being a participant in a gravely immoral practice.

The Willis brothers’ Christian values are evident in their support for multiple faith- based organizations including Kalamazoo Right to Life, Alternatives Pregnancy Care Center, and Young Life Kalamazoo.

More information about the Willis Brothers and their commitment to their faith can be found here.

The lawsuit, filed on July 24, 2013 by the TMLC on behalf of the Willis brothers, claims that the HHS Mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act while also challenging the constitutionality of the HHS Mandate under the First Amendment rights to the Free Exercise of Religion, Free Speech and the Establishment Clause.

Named as Defendants in the lawsuit are Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; Thomas Perez, Secretary of the Department of Labor; Jack Lew, Secretary of the Department of Treasury; and their respective departments.