A screenshot of the "Ignite" brochure (Photo: flfamily.org)

The leader of a politically influential Florida group that frequently advocates against LGBT and abortion rights has issued a new fundraising pitch to help gin up support for the work of its “Ignite an Enduring Cultural Transformation” campaign during the Sunshine State’s upcoming legislative session.

In May, The American Independent’s Andy Birkey reported that the Florida Family Policy Council was one of a network of organizations dedicated to raising money through the “Ignite” program to “pass anti-gay marriage amendments, curtail abortion rights and, in at least one case, ban ‘transgender bathrooms.’”

According to a Policy Council campaign brochure (PDF) that has been circulating since the campaign was announced more than a year ago, “Ignite” will champion “Biblically-Based Beliefs” in the state capitol during the upcoming legislative session.

These “beliefs” include:

Moral, physical and spiritual absolutes exist and were given to mankind to govern all of life. The sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman is the essential element of the family and a strong family is the essential element of a strong society. Life is a gift from God and should be protected from the time of conception to the end of natural life. First Amendment religious liberties are critical to our freedom as a people and must be protected and defended.

“Achieving transformation requires a lasting and enduring movement working strategically in key, cultural-defining areas,” the brochure claims. “‘Ignite’ is a two-year plan designed to fan the embers of November 2010 into a lasting movement built to achieve enduring cultural transformation.”

Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

According to a new fundraising pitch from Policy Council President John Stemberger, the campaign is meant to defeat what he calls “radical organizations like MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, American Atheists, and the ACLU.” He claims those groups “are doing everything they can to force through their liberal agenda.”

“Our opponents are preparing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 12 months to advance their radical agenda in Florida and across the country,” he writes.

Among the goals listed on the campaign brochure are:

Education – Preparing Leaders:

• 1,000 worldview training attendees.
• 700 pastors equipped at briefings.
• 5,000 couples trained as marriage mentors
• 100 student leaders networked and engaged
• 65 legislators briefed and informed on issues

Legislation – Promoting Values:

• Continue Tallahassee Office and Staff
• Pass Ultrasound Option before Abortion
• Pass Marriage Strengthening Initiatives
• Defeat Radical Homosexual Agenda

Providing Accountability:

• Distribute 3 million voter guides.
• Reach 5 million values voters.
• Engage 3,000 pastors and churches

The group has already begun reaching out to religious voters. In November, Stemberger started “Project Active Citizen” to get as many religious voters to the polls as possible. In an email to supporters asking for donations to the project, he described it as “an effort … to help encourage thousands of pro-life and pro-family Floridians to register to vote.”

Stemberger has also already begun to distribute voter guides specifically geared towards pastors and how they can legally influence voters.

Project Active Citizen is just one of a handful campaigns or events that have come on the heels of Stemberger’s involvement in the Florida Renewal Project’s Pastors’ Policy Briefing. The “briefing” was held in order to involve churches and religious leaders in elections. Media outlets were barred from the event and a reporter was even escorted away from a meeting between presidential candidates Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich and pastors. Since the briefing, Stemberger helped lead a religious right get-out-the-vote event that took place in about 100 churches all over the country — including 34 in Florida.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (Photo: Facebook)

As the Independent’s Birkey reported, Stemberger’s influential group has received big-name endorsements, including one from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who “loaned his name to the Florida Family Policy Council’s Ignite plan, which calls for spending $300,000 to mandate that women view an ultrasound before having an abortion and to ‘defeat the radical homosexual agenda.’”Rubio is quoted in the group’s campaign brochure touting its success. “FFPC’s successes in education, legislation and accountability have made them an indispensable asset in promoting and defending traditional values,” Rubio said, according to the Policy Council.

Birkey reported that the group has “averaged revenues of $384,000 over the last three years.”

Although no new specific legislative goals have been listed by the group, Stemberger writes in his fundraising pitch that the group “has an aggressive plan” for 2012.

“Attacks from those who work to undermine life, marriage, family and religious liberty are more sophisticated, more aggressive, and more frequent than ever,” the “Ignite” brochure says. ”‘We the people’ spoke loud and clear in November of 2010 but that one moment, by itself, will not achieve the cultural transformation we seek.”

Photo: A screenshot of the “Ignite” brochure (flfamily.org)

Of the 750 school districts involved in the study, banning has lessened from 20 to 17 books. The most frequent type of forbidden books came from the Young Adult (or YA) genre, for mentions of teen sex, AIDS, gay/lesbian relationships, drug use and cursing. Other problematic areas included “scary castles,” zombies and vampires.

Books removed from school shelves include Alice on the Outside by Phillis Reynolds Naylor, Tangled by Carolyn Markler, and The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney.

Not all books reported were “banned” outright by districts. Some restricted access to certain books by age, reading level and parental permission. Others were challenged and ultimately retained. In one instance, naked photos from Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary prompted restricted usage from a San Antonio elementary school. Classic science fictions tales including Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (challenged for “sexual content or nudity” and “offensive to religious beliefs,”) and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (eventually reinstated) were met with opposition from concerned parents.

A video entitled “Visit into the Daily Lives of Muslim Teenagers,” was also challenged for offense to religious beliefs as well as drugs and alcohol; the Southlake ISD provided an alternate book choice for students.

While the ACLU reported the number of books banned has slowed, they also discovered few school districts employ a process to dispute a challenge to barred literature. “Once a book is banned, it is usually banned forever,” the civil liberties group writes.

Censorship of the YA genre is troubling, the ACLU notes, because those are the books that motivate and help cultivate an interest in reading.

At the center of the controversy is the recent revelation that the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) might have used taxpayer dollars to wage a campaign against same-sex marriage in the state.

Shorty after The American Independent’s sister site The Iowa Independent began reporting on IFPC’s Marriage Matters program, IFPC announced they had agreed in September 2009 to stop accepting money from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for the counseling operation. Marriage Matters was funded by federal government dollars while the organization carried out a campaign to oust three state Supreme Court judges whose 2009 ruling legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa.

But IFPC did not officially relinquish the grant funding until nearly a year later, The Iowa Independent reported.

In a letter dated Aug. 3, 2010, HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) asked IFPC President Chuck Hurley to submit a formal relinquishment letter explaining the group’s reasoning for rejecting the funds. That was the first step in the process. The next step in the process, as ACF Grants Management Specialist Abangolee J. Caulcrick explained in that initial letter, would be for IFPC to submit a final financial status report and a final progress report.

As to the reason for rejecting additional government money, on Aug. 10, 2010, Hurley wrote:

“While the process has been invigorating, we believe the federal constraints are impeding our progress to help a broader range of couples. We believe organizationally we are in a position to become privately funded.”

After filing a records request with ACF, The American Independent discovered that IFPC never filed the required documentation. On Dec. 30, 2010, Caulcrick sent Hurley a letter stating:

“I am contacting you for the last time to submit your final financial status report and program progress report along with your property inventory and disposition statement. If I do not receive these reports on or before January 7, 2011, I will be left with no alternative but to administratively closeout your grant.”

However, according to the ACF FOIA office, IFPC’s grant file is still open, because that documentation was never received.

The ACF communications department was not forthcoming with further information about the closeout process and would not answer questions as to whether IFPC violated federal policy by not submitting the requested reports.

Even less forthcoming was The Family Leader, who declined to explain why it has not submitted financial documents for the final year that it received funding.

“We have made a decision as an organization not to grant any more interviews on that subject,” Family Leader spokesperson Julie Summa told The American Independent (TAI), referring to the Healthy Marriage grant. “The public records are [available].”

Unanswered questions

While neither ACF nor The Family Leader will answer questions about process, larger ethical questions remain concerning the funding of the grant itself.

In her explanation as to why IFPC will not comment on the Healthy Marriage grant, Summa referenced the Associated Press article that sparked outrage among LGBT-rights groups in Iowa because it showed a funding overlap for the taxpayer-funded program and the political anti-same-sex-marriage campaign. Adding to the ire was the revelation gay and lesbian couples were shut out of the marriage-counseling program. Early this month, LGBT-advocacy group One Iowa launched a petition asking The Family Leader to return the $2.2 million dollars it received in grant funding back to America’s taxpayers.

In a phone interview, University of Iowa Professor Brad Richardson, who was paid to evaluate IFPC’s grant, told TAI he had never heard of an organization turning down a full year’s worth of federal funding for a successful program.

“I’ve never seen anybody turn back money, so they must have had a good reason,” Richardson said.

As a third-party evaluator, Richardson — who also evaluated IFPC’s federally-funded Compassion Capital Fund demonstration grant projects in 2004 and 2005 – reviewed the organization’s proposal and achievements. Richardson’s semiannual evaluation report from October 2010, obtained by TAI, reflects progress: IFPC met each of its goals by about 25 percent, and data from the Iowa health department shows that as of 2005, the state’s divorce rate has been on a steady decline.

What concerned Richardson in the initial proposal, however, was the fact that gay and lesbian couples were explicitly written out of the project.

“Early on in the project, as I was looking at the materials, [I noticed] the materials were implying couples [they would] be serving were male and female,” Richardson said. “I mentioned, ‘What about if they are not male and female?’ They told me that it wasn’t a target population they were focusing on.”

“I don’t know what would happen today,” Richardson continued, referring to fact that in 2009, same-sex marriage was legalized. “Because you’d be excluding people that were legally married. It would be a bigger issue today.”

The question of funding overlap comes from the fact that, according to the AP, IFPC spent $192,000 of the $550,000 it received in 2009 on salaries and employee benefits for five employees, including Hurley. The AP revealed that in April, when the news organization asked Marriage Matters operations manager Chris Nitzschke which IFPC employees were paid through the grant, Nitzschke only mentioned IFPC Vice President Mike Hartwig was paid; he did not mention more than half of his own salary came from the grant.

Additionally, the Healthy Marriage grant money was spent on telephone, Internet and rent for the same building out of which IFPC was operating its campaign to overturn the gay-marriage Supreme Court ruling.

Political connections

One of the paid employees, Matt Reisetter — who was running the Northeast Iowa Marriage Alliance (NIMA) for the Marriage Matters program and is now the Family Leader’s director of development — was running for state political office and working for a presidential candidate at the same time.

In 2006, Reisetter, a Republican, ran a failed bid for Iowa House District 19 seat against the Democratic incumbent Bob Kressig. And in late 2007, he was hired by then-GOP presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Reiseitter’s job as director of coalitions was essentially to help pastors figure out how much political activity they could engage in without violating the law.

Huckabee was publicly endorsed by IFPC President Chuck Hurley.

In IFPC’s grant project abstract, obtained by TAI, IFPC proposed to pay Reisetter for 1,140 hours of work at a rate of $22 an hour, or $25,080. As part of the proposal, $19,100 of Reisetter’s salary would be paid by federal money; the rest would be matched by NIMA funds.

As part of the Healthy Marriage grant conditions, IFPC was required to sign a form “Assurances – Non-Construction Programs” (PDF) drafted by the Office of Management and Budget, which stipulates grant recipients “will comply, as applicable, with provisions of the federal Hatch Act (5 U.S.C. § 1501 and 7324-7328) which limit the political activities of employees whose principal employment activities are funded in whole or in part with Federal funds.”

Richardson told TAI it was not his job to evaluate whether or not there was any improper usage of the federal grant money received by IFPC. He said that would likely be the job of the operations manager, who is not talking.

Randall Wilson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, which is investigating how the IFPC spent the Healthy Marriage federal funds, told TAI the ACLU is trying to determine whether taxpayer funding for this project was diverted as a subsidy for political activity.

“One does not want federal money to be funding religious organizations to be engaging in political activity,” Wilson said.

The investigation, however, is stalled because the ACF has not fulfilled the ACLU’s FOIA request filed months ago.

As Eric Bearse, a former speechwriter for Gov. Rick Perry said in the days before Perry’s prayer and fast rally last weekend, “Any time the ACLU is opposed to you, you must be doing something right.”

State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Richardson

But the two groups have managed to find common ground in state Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Richardson.

At the close of its annual conference in New Orleans last Friday, ALEC named Madden its Legislator of the Year, an award given to lawmakers who, the organization said, have taken “a leadership role in advancing, introducing and/or enacting policies based on the fundamental Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty.”

ALEC’s other lawmaker of the year was Arizona state Sen. Nancy Barto, who supported a back-door abortion ban limiting access to abortions motivated by race or sex, and has sponsored industry-supported legislation toopen Arizona’s health insurance market to companies licensed in other states.

But Madden’s zeal for shrinking government has been channeled into one area progressives would like to shrink too: Texas’ massive criminal justice system. In its announcement, ALEC lauded Madden’s work with state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, to find “smart on crime” approaches to keep the state’s prison costs lower:

Owing to their joint success in changing the Texas tough “lock-em up and throw away the key” approach which didn’t deliver entirely constructive outcomes other than “construction” of more prisons, Whitmire and Madden were named by Governing magazine as one of eight Public Officials of the Year in 2010. As a consequence of probation and parole changes and investments in substance abuse treatment and similar diversion programs which began in 2007, a state prison will be closed for the first time in Texas history by the end of August.

Texas has become a national model for criminal justice reforms over the last four years, and an ACLU report released Tuesday named Madden among the prison reformers responsible for progress in recent years:

Bipartisan reforms in historically “tough on crime” states, including Texas, have significantly reduced incarceration rates, saved taxpayers billions of dollars, reduced crime rates and should be emulated nationwide.

“I am proud that Texas has made great strides in strengthening alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders,” said ACLU of Texas executive director Terri Burke in a statement. “It makes sense from a public health and safety standpoint, while saving Texas millions of dollars.”

The report quotes Madden before breaking down just how much money was saved by the reforms, introduced in 2007 as the “Whitmire/Madden Correctional Treatment and Diversion Plan.”

“We’re in the process of sharply turning the ship . . . to focus more on treatment of peoples’ problems so they can do their time and return to society as productive citizens,” the report quotes Madden in 2007. The series of new laws focused on increasing access to treatment and prison alternatives, which, according to the report, have kept 11,000 inmates out of Texas’ still-growing prison population.

Those reforms naturally appeal to small-government purists, too.

But as a series of recent stories have pointed out, the private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America has helped craft model bills for ALEC do exactly the opposite of what Madden and Whitmire have advocated: mandate tougher prison sentences andexpand police authority to arrest illegal immigrants like Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which boost the demand for immigrant detention facilities.

The ACLU of Texas and Americans United for Separation of Church and State hosted the evening gathering called “Faith, Family and Freedom” as members of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Atheist communities condemned the event’s religious divisiveness, political motivations and affiliation with the AFA.

Rev. William Lawson, an African-American Baptist pastor, pointed to racial exclusivity of the event, saying the rally’s key coordinators consisted of a narrow group in their religious and ethnic backgrounds. The event, said Lawson, is not only a Christian-based prayer rally, but a white Christian prayer rally.

“There is still [racial] prejudice present today. What Governor Perry is doing by hosting a Christian prayer rally and excluding everyone else is a new form of Jim Crow,” said Lawson.

In an interview after the church gathering, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who came to show her solidarity with the grassroots groups, addressed controversial remarks made by AFA leaders, including contentious racial commentary.

“People have the right to say words that may be controversial but they don’t have the right to cry fire in a crowded theater,” she said. “When you condemn someone for their humanity it raises the question of your argument’s validity.”

“It would be very curious and very difficult to understand why any human being, who came to be part of the solution, should be denied on the basis of their sexual orientation, their race, their ethnicity or their religion,” said Lee. She said the space at Reliant Stadium would be better served as a site for feeding the hungry and homeless.

Imam Qasim Khan, president and CEO of Islamic organization Shades of White, called Perry a “contradictory politician, one that claims to be religious but fails to help those most in need. “He has been hired by us, we are his employers. I think he’s confused,” said Khan. “Some politicians are so addicted to power they forget what they are charged to do.” Khan said whatever the turnout at “The Response” is, it “won’t be enough to get him reelected.”

Mini Timmaraju, a practicing Hindu and part of the Vedanta Society of Greater Houston, stressed peace and diversity while Dr. Ariel Thomann, who grew up evangelical and is now a member of the Humanists of Houston, focused on the event’s religious exclusivity. Rev. Ellen Cooper Davis, member of the Houston Clergy Council, a group that directed a letter of opposition to “The Response,” condemned the prayer rally for exploiting faith and prayer and criticized the event’s co-hosts for denigrating gays and lesbians.

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of AU, traced many of the contentious remarks made by AFA, while echoing sentiments expressed during the counter rally’s precursor, including its overstepping of church-state boundaries, which the Texas Independent previously reported.

For Houston resident Robin Willis it was AFA’s “appalling” attacks on the LGBT community that tipped the scales. “We need to combat the pervasive misconception that all Christians are homophobic,” she said. “Hopefully events like this one serve as an antidote to that type of thinking.”

In the pews, Jacoba Schneider came to show her anger at what she described as an effort by public officials to force their own religion on their constituency. “I cannot reconcile prayer events like this one — demanding and assuming we should all share in the same belief — when we are such a multicultural society,” she said.

In a conference room across from Reliant Stadium, the venue for Saturday’s prayer event, AU executive director Rev. Barry Lynn said the rally is not only in violation of church-state boundaries, but is a dangerous result of spiritual arrogance and a form of government-supported evangelism.

“The aim of the event is to persuade people to adopt specific religious beliefs. That is never the government’s job. The sponsors will let non-Christians in precisely so they can learn about Jesus and be converted,” said Lynn, who also condemned the American Family Association’s role in the event. The group is funding the event, and has been classified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as the Texas Independent has reported.

“Even many of us Christians disagree with what we can expect to hear tomorrow. I don’t believe our nation is under a curse because we have welcomed gay people, I don’t believe the statue of liberty is a demonic idol, I don’t believe Christ punishes people with bad weather,” said Lynn, alluding to contentious remarks by some endorsers of the event.

Bill Martin, senior fellow for Religion and Public Policy at Rice University said James Madison would disapprove of Perry’s event because it conflates religious and government interests. Thomas Jefferson, Martin recalled, once hosted a prayer rally of his own, and later said he was mistaken for doing so.

Martin said even if the religious event was void of political undertones, the highly publicized rally fails in matching the Bible’s teachings as written in Matthew 6:5-6: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray in public places to be seen by others… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your heavenly parent, who is unseen.”

Jewish and Muslim leaders were also on hand today, and said the event’s religious exclusivity is problematic. Randy Czarlinsky of the American Jewish Committee of Houston said the “overtly Christian” event stood in stark contrast to the National Day of Prayer hosted by the White House and other prayer events across the country. Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations stressed the importance of embracing religious pluralism, and said his group was not protesting the prayer aspect of the event, but its political underpinnings.

“Public office cannot be used to project personal beliefs to others. No government should be in the business of promoting one specific religion, we are a pluralstic nation,” said Carroll. “The governor has missed a golden opportunity to show true leadership in uniting all Texans.”

An update on the ACLU’s open records request filed last month to ensure no taxpayer funds have been spent on the Perry-sponsored event, turned up 700 pages of documents, said ACLU of Texas’ executive director Terri Burke. But, she said, they offered no clarity as to whether public money had been spent on the event. The group will continue to review the newly released information for evidence, Burke said, but after an all-night analysis, she said the documents were mostly unhelpful.

The counter-rally takes place tonight in Houston at Mt. Ararat Baptist Church at 7 p.m., and features a host of religious leaders.

The legal battle surrounding a 2009 abortion law is still going strong in Arizona, after the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliate filed a lawsuit in September of that year challenging the constitutionality of the the Arizona Abortion Consent Act (PDF) after it was signed into law two months earlier. At the time, the Arizona Superior Court for Maricopa County granted Planned Parenthood’s preliminary injunction and effectively stalled the law. In March 2010, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal alliance of Christian attorneys, appealed the judge’s order in conjunction with the Center for Arizona Policy (which helped draft the bill), the Bioethics Defense Fund and the Life Legal Defense Foundation.

On Tuesday afternoon, counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund is arguing at the Arizona Court of Appeals in Phoenix on behalf of the bill’s sponsors, Sens. Linda Gray and Nancy Barto (Barto was an Arizona House representative when she sponsored the bill), as well as several organizations (PDF), including the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Arizona Catholic Conference and the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Greater Phoenix.

What the law as signed did:

• Prohibit non-physicians from performing surgical abortions.
• Require women to be told abortion alternatives, “long-term medical risks” associated with abortion, the probable gestational age of the unborn child. All of this information must be consumed at least 24 hours before the scheduled abortion, during which time the woman must wait before receiving the abortion.
• Allow for health care workers to refuse to perform or facilitate abortion procedures.
• Require minors seeking abortions to first produce notarized parental consent.

Testifying on Tuesday is ADF senior counsel Steven H. Aden.

“The protection of women should not be on hold while the nation’s largest abortion purveyor ties things up in court,” Aden said in a press release sent out Monday.

During Arizona’s recently-concluded legislative session, Gov. Jan Brewer signed 16 Center for Arizona Policy-supported bills, all to go into effect July 20. On Monday, the conservative policy group sent out an email to supporters asking them to pray that these laws go unchallenged in court. The letter also asked supporters to pray for a favorable outcome of Tuesday’s hearing, specifically that “the Lord grants the three-judge panel wisdom to understand why this law is so critical for our state.”

“The ruling means that Hoosiers who rely on federal funding have lost access to their crucial and lifesaving preventive health care at Planned Parenthood of Indiana,” said PPIN President and CEO Betty Cockrum in a statement following the court ruling in the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis.

PPIN has also said it would have to stop providing disease-intervention services to hundreds of women and men in 22 counties. Those services are currently provided through staff based in Lafayette and Muncie health centers.

Though Gov. Daniels has said that Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration would be in charge of notifying Medicaid recipients of nearby options, FSSA spokesperson Marcus Barlow told The American Independent the onus is up to Planned Parenthood to notify Hoosiers that their services will no longer be covered by Medicaid.

But the organization has not yet done so, PPIN spokesperson Kate Shepherd told TAI. Through Saturday, Planned Parenthood will be accepting its Medicaid recipients “in most cases,” she said. Some “long-term forms of birth control” will not be covered. In the meantime, she said the organization is scrutinizing its Women’s Health Fund, which is funded by donors for preventative care, to see how many patients PPIN can continue cover. As to whether any clinics might have to close, Shepherd said is “too early to say.”

The FSSA did update its website following Tuesday’s bill passage, notifying Medicaid recipients that their benefit plans have not changed; the only thing that has changed is where they can receive covered reproductive services such as birth control and pelvic exams.

Barlow said the agency does not have a comprehensive list of Medicaid providers throughout the state that also provide reproductive health services such as those provided at the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics. Medicaid recipients are to use the Indiana Medicaid for Members online provider-search service. He said family planning services only make up 7 percent of total services offered by Medicaid providers in the state and the funding stripped by Daniels’ bill only represents 0.02 percent total Medicaid funding for the state.

Barlow said he was confident that all 92 counties in Indiana have clinics offering the services defunded at PPIN such a contraception, pap smears and sexually transmitted disease prevention.

But Cockrum has challenged that claim, saying that rural areas such as Elkhart County in northeastern part of the state — an area famous for its large recreational vehicle industry and high unemployment rate, which in 2009 reached 18 percent and earned a visit from President Obama — do not have comparable service.

After collecting all the Medicaid providers in the state, the governor reported that in Elkhart County there are 37 providers. A receptionist at the Elkhart County Health Department could not readily refer TAI to any Medicaid providers in the county that offer services such as hormonal birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing.

River Oaks OB/GYN in Elkhart, Ind., provides basic gynecological services and sees patients on Medicaid but only sees pregnant women on the Managed Health Services plan, under the Healthy Indiana Plan. Fairhaven Obstetrics and Gynecology in Goshen, Ind. — which claims to provide “quality obstetric and gynecologic care guided by Christian principles” — and Goshen OB/GYN offer comprehensive contraceptive services to Medicaid recipients, as well as STD testing, but only for female patients. Many family planning clinics in the county listed in the Yellow Pages — such as the Women’s Care Center, LDS Family Services, Natural Family Planning — offer free pregnancy tests and classes but no contraception or STD prevention services.

Shepherd said Planned Parenthood is still hopeful its case will win in court. Judge Tanya Walton Pratt denied the request for a temporary restraining order Wednesday afternoon, but Shepherd said she told the plaintiffs not to read into her feelings on the merits of the case. There will be a hearing in Indianapolis on June 6.

Despite initial conjectures that this new law, passed as House Bill 1210, would take away all public family-planning funding, the state has conceded that some family planning funds would not be affected. At issue now is $1.4 million in mostly Medicaid funding, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, which also notes that the state itself is now at risk of losing $4 million annually in federal family planning grants.

Aside from the defunding measure, HB 1210 also bans abortion after 20 weeks unless the mother’s life is at risk.

PPIN, being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, is challenging the “fetal pain” and other provisions in addition to the funding piece of the legislation.

On the day Obama signed the health care bill into law — March 23, 2010 — Liberty University, represented by its partner institution Liberty Counsel, filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Timothy Geithner, secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department; Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary; Hilda L. Solis; Labor Department secretary; and U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., for allegedly violating constitutional rights by implementing individual and employer mandates. After failing in district court, Liberty University has appealed (PDF) the case.

Listen to Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, argue before a three-judge panel.

Oral arguments for Liberty University, Inc. v. Timothy Geithner:

Also on March 23, 2010, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli sued Sebelius, challenging the health care act’s individual mandate. On Tuesday, Cuccinelli also appealed to the panel. Both Cuccinelli and Liberty hope their cases will reach the U.S. Supreme Court by year’s end.

Listen to oral arguments for Commonwealth of Virginia, Ex Rel. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II v. Kathleen Sebelius:

“Today we took Step Two in a three-step process,” said Cuccinelli in a news conference following the arguments. “As Judge Motz noted, the legal questions raised today are questions that will be answered in another court in another time.”

Cuccinelli offered an overview of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s case during the news conference:

Virginia has argued that the mandate that every person must buy government-approved health insurance violates the Constitution. Using the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to force people to buy a product goes beyond Congress’s power. This is why I have said all along that this is about liberty, not health care. The insurance mandate penalizes people for not engaging in commerce. In other words, you can get fined for doing nothing.

Virginia has also argued that the penalty the government wants to charge if you do not buy health insurance is not a tax. The government cannot start calling the penalty a tax to try to make it legal under Congress’s taxing authority. Congress and the president passed it as a penalty, not a tax; it works as a penalty, not as a tax.

[...]

If we cross this constitutional line with health care now – where the government can force us to buy a private product and say it is for our own good – then we will have given the government the power to force us to buy other private products, such as cars, gym memberships, or even asparagus. The government’s power to intrude on our lives for our own good will be virtually unlimited.

[...]

You heard about standing today. The federal government thinks it can tell the states to disregard their own laws – like it is doing with Arizona, but then also says the states do not have the same right to challenge federal laws in court. That is not how our system of government is set up. The founders set it up so the states were a check on potentially overreaching federal authority.

I have said all along that this lawsuit is not about health care. It is about liberty. At the same time, I understand that people want more affordable health care, and I sympathize with people who honestly cannot afford it. As a state senator, that was a problem I tried to address by trying to pass a law to allow our citizens to buy better or cheaper plans in other states. But as someone who has sworn to uphold the law, I cannot endorse taking away the rights of all so that government can provide health care to some.

When a ruling will be issued from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is unknown. All three judges were appointed by Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. The panels are chosen randomly.

Partner institution Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit law firm that traditionally defends right-wing causes, is representing the university and two private individuals, Michele Waddell and Joanne V. Merrill, in the lawsuit (PDF), which was first filed by Liberty Counsel on March 23, 2010, the same day President Obama signed the health care bill into law. The federal suit, first filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, challenges both the individual and employer mandates and centers around the complaint that the faith-based university could not refuse insurance companies that cover abortion or other health care services the university considers objectionable. Liberty Counsel argued that the new health care law violates the university’s rights as a religious institution but lost the case.

Liberty Counsel has since appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. the oral argument in the appeal will be heard at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., to be followed by a press conference.

In a press statement released Monday, Liberty Counsel said it expects a ruling to be decided by the end of the year at the case will likely move on to the Supreme Court.

“I am looking forward to the argument tomorrow,” said Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, in the statement. ”This massive health insurance law goes beyond the outer limits of the Constitution. It is a big step toward a centralized government. The stakes riding on this lawsuit are high. This case goes beyond health insurance and is more about the role of the federal government to control private decisions and burden the free enterprise system.”

Specifically, plaintiffs are suing U.S. Treasury Department secretary Timothy Geithner, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Department secretary Hilda L. Solis and U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and claiming that certain provisions of the health care act violate the following constitutional amendments in the Bill of Rights:

• First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
• Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
• 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Liberty Counsel has also argued that the university should be exempt from the health care act under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1997). In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend-of-the-court brief, arguing that religious beliefs should not dictate access to health care service for others.

This lawsuit represents the first challenge to the health care law to be argued at the appellate level.

A separate suit, which will be heard in the same court following Staver’s testimony, Commonwealth of Virginia, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, challenges the individual mandate in the health care act  but not the employer mandate.