When Sonia Sotomayor decided, in the last hours of the last day of last year, to issue a temporary stay on the enforcement of the ObamaCare contraception mandate, she surprised a lot of people, but likely no one more than the man who had appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barack Obama prefers his (nominally) Catholic women to be like Kathleen Sebelius, whom he named secretary of Health and Human Services seemingly as a (middle) finger in the eye of the Catholic bishops of the United States. While Sebelius and her coreligionist Sotomayor probably differ only in the slightest degree on the question of abortion (and not at all on contraception), the HHS secretary seems more committed to the destruction of traditional morality, whatever measures it may take. Sotomayor, in this instance at least, placed the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion above ideological considerations.
Whether, in the face of administration pressure to reverse her decision, Sotomayor’s deference to the Constitution will prevail is anyone’s guess. While the Department of Justice seems determined to prevent the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor from coming before the entire Court, presumably out of fear that the contraception mandate will be overturned or at least scaled back, in the end it’s not likely to matter. The battle over the contraception...