Tulsa Catholic Church Supports Pruit's Federal Contraception Suit

Oklahoma joins seven other states in a federal lawsuit against the government's birth control mandate. 

The suit challenges the government's requirement that religious employers offer health insurance coverage for services that conflict with their religious beliefs. That includes contraceptives and other birth control services. 

Read the complaint filed in federal court.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt says the mandate is an invasion of First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion. 

Contraception violates one of the tenants of the Catholic faith - and the church believes requiring employers to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance - would not only violate a Catholic's individual beliefs - but their constitutional rights.

"Here's the government coming in and saying there's a certain tenant that you hold that we want you to no longer hold and we want you to in this case provide or purchase contraception," said Timothy Putnam, who works for the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa.

For Timothy Putnam, the Director of Family Life for Tulsa's Catholic Diocese, free exercise of religion should allow a faithful Catholic to not provide contraception coverage to their employees.

"We are very concerned not just with our freedom, though that's part of it, but with the integrity of the entire first amendment," Putnam said.

It's the first amendment aspect of it that's prompted Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to sue the federal government.

Pruitt says the requirement to provide contraception "conflicts with the most basic elements of freedom provided to all Americans to practice their lawful religion wherever, whenever and however they choose."

The lawsuit claims the contraception clause of the health care law violates the free speech clause of the constitution.

Pruitt and Attorneys General from 6 other states are suing to overturn it. They say the basic rights of religious people - and religious employers - are at stake.

There is support for including contraceptive care in the healthcare law, as both a matter of privacy, and practicality - so people who work for religious employers won't have to go outside the system to get the care they want.

There is a temporary exemption to the rules - for example for a church that only employs its own members. But that's only temporary - and doesn't apply to charities that employ or serve people of all faiths or no faith.