Trump judge sides with North Dakota Catholics, blocks ‘anti-religion’ Biden regulations
A Trump judge sided Wednesday with Catholic organizations in North Dakota, shielding them from the enforcement of a Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rule and guidance that required their complicity in employees’ efforts to kill their unborn children as well as gender ideology.
The outcome was unsurprising given U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor’s suggestions in September when granting a preliminary injunction to the Bismarck Diocese and the Catholic Benefits Association that “this case is not hard” and that the Biden EEOC’s rule served as a “reminder of the danger of government action that is clearly anti-religion.”
The Biden EEOC went out of its way to issue regulations and enforcement guidelines that ran roughshod over Christian employers’ constitutional freedoms.
One rule in particular, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, proved especially troubling for the Bismarck Diocese and the CBA, the latter of which serves over 9,000 employers nationwide, as it would have both required them to provide paid leave and other accommodations to employees seeking abortion and restricted their ability to criticize employees’ decision to kill their children.
The EEOC also issued enforcement guidance under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which the plaintiffs’ original complaint noted would effectively require Catholic employers to “use false pronouns, to avoid speaking the truth regarding human sexuality around certain employees, and to permit opposite-sex employees to intrude into private spaces reserved to those of the other sex.”
The Bismarck Diocese and the CBA sued the EEOC and former EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows in July 2024, seeking an injunction against the rule and guidance.
‘The goal may be to find new ways to infringe on religious believers’ fundamental rights.’
The plaintiffs — well positioned at the outset legally to take on the Biden administration, as a federal court in Mississippi had already enjoined the EEOC rule at issue in another case — argued that the EEOC had run afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; violated their First Amendment freedoms of speech and association along with the Free Exercise Clause; and infringed upon church autonomy.
Judge Traynor evidently agreed.
Traynor permanently blocked the EEOC this week from interpreting or enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and implementing regulations against the Diocese of Bismarck and the Catholic Benefits Association “in a manner that would require them to accommodate abortion or infertility treatments that are contrary to the Catholic faith, speak in favor of the same or refrain from speaking the same.”
The Trump judge also blocked the EEOC and its agents from interpreting or enforcing Title VII in a manner that would require the Bismarck Diocese, the CBA, and future Catholic members to speak favorably about abortion or sex changes, require them to remain silent about their opposition to either, or require them to indulge transvestites’ desire to use the pronouns or private spaces belonging to the opposite sex.
Traynor previously acknowledged that the suit fell “into a long line of cases that should be unnecessary in a country that was built on the concept of freedom of religion.”
“One would think after all this litigation, the government would respect the boundaries of religious freedom,” wrote Traynor. “Instead, it seems the goal may be to find new ways to infringe on religious believers’ fundamental rights to the exercise of their religions.”
The judge, a member of the Federalist Society, suggested that the “repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion,” possibly signal that it is indeed now “a post-Christian age.”
‘The Court has upheld our religious freedom rights.’
Attorney Martin Nussbaum told the Associated Press that his clients are “very thankful to the federal judiciary for vindicating religious freedom rights” in this case.
“One of the things that we’ve seen is an emerging practice on behalf of some of the federal administrations — we also see this in certain states — a desire not only to mandate immoral benefits but to impose speech codes that would be contrary to Catholic values,” said Nussbaum. “But the speech codes go beyond pronouns to even speaking about what Catholic teaching is, and we’re just grateful to this court for protecting the freedom of speech of Catholic organizations as well.”
Bishop David Kagan of the Bismarck Diocese stated, “The Court has upheld our religious freedom rights, and that is all we ever wanted.”
A Better Balance, a liberal activist group that previously opposed President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, condemned the ruling. Inimai Chettiar, the group’s leftist president, suggested the case was “extremist” in nature and claimed the ruling was “part of a broad trend of attacks on women’s rights and reproductive freedom.”
