This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 20, 2013 - Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, is calling on state Attorney General Chris Koster to appeal last week’s court ruling that blocks provisions of a new state law that allows employers to exclude contraception, abortion or sterilization from insurance coverage.
Jones said in a statement Wednesday that Koster, a Democrat, must “immediately appeal this case and defend the rights of Missouri citizens by challenging the contraception mandate as unconstitutional. Missourians need to be protected from mandates that violate their religious beliefs.”
Jones also has sent a letter to Koster expressing similar sentiments.
Jones said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon that he expected the attorney general to give serious consideration to the matter.
A top aide to Koster said the legal staff is still reviewing the decision of St. Louis-based federal Judge Audrey G. Fleissig, who ruled that the law, known as SB749, violated federal coverage requirements in the Affordable Care Act.
Fleissig, a former U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District (under President Bill Clinton), noted that federal law supersedes state law, when there’s a conflict.
Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat and former attorney general, had made a similar assertion about the bill’s questionable constitutionality when he vetoed SB749 last year. Jones cites the General Assembly’s subsequent override last fall as one of his first achievements as speaker.
The implication of this legal fight might have an impact on a related bill this session, sponsored by Jones, that allows medical personnel to decline to participate in procedures or research that violate their beliefs or religion, including abortion, contraception, sterilization, in-vitro fertilization and embryonic stem-cell research.
That bill, HB457, passed the Missouri House last week by a veto-proof majority of 116-41.
Jones said in an interview that the court fight over the 2012 law regarding employers adds to the significance of why the General Assembly needs to pass HB457, also known as the “conscience bill,” relating to medical professionals.
Nixon has yet to indicate what he would do if HB457 reaches his desk.
Regarding Fleissig’s ruling, Jones said, “Missourians’ religious rights under the First Amendment must take precedence over President Obama’s overreaching health care law.”
Jones also noted that the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Tom Monaghan, recently won his bid for a court order to prevent enforcement of the employer mandate on insurance coverage of contraception.
Jones added that he was especially proud of last fall’s veto override of the Missouri bill -- now in limbo by Fleissig’s ruling -- that, in effect, seeks to block the federal mandate. “That was my very first day as speaker,’’ he said.
He predicted that the battle over the ACA’s mandate of contraception coverage will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Update) The Catholic Bishops of Missouri also have sent a letter to Koster, asking him to appeal Fleissig's ruling. (End update)
