Aquinas College in Nashville filed suit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in regards to the HHS mandate, commonly known as the "Contraception Mandate."

President Sister Mary Sarah Galbraith, issued the following statement: 

"The Health and Human Services Mandate, promulgated as a Final Rule on February 10, 2012, has placed Aquinas College, and many other institutions in our country, in a precarious position. The narrowness of the religious employer exemption clause within this mandate seriously compromises our freedom as an institution to act according to our conscience. We are now placed in the position of having little choice but to proceed with litigation.  We do this in order to protect our most fundamental right to exercise our consciences and our religious beliefs freely.  We do so, as well, in an effort to secure for those who will come after us a way of life that protects and defends the dignity and freedom of every person, and of those institutions that are, by charter, pledged to serve all peoples for the building up of the common good. The Constitution of this great nation established "of the people, by the people, for the people", clearly states the will of the Founding Fathers in the Preamble: to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."  Yet, within the constrictive measures of the HHS Mandate lies a double contempt for the common good, general welfare, and the blessings of tranquility for all peoples. First, is the restriction placed on service agencies that exist for the sake of the common good; and second, is that placed on those who are served by these agencies.  Such an unreasonably restrictive burden, laid upon institutions whose sole purpose is the support and preservation of the common good, creates an unwarranted hardship for those members of society who rely upon the services of these agencies for food, health care, education, and the basic needs of daily life.  These agencies, now under threat of elimination due to the HHS Mandate, care for the temporal as well as the spiritual needs of those who come to their doors, regardless of age, creed, gender, race, color, culture, ethnicity, or socio-economic standing. The President of the United States, whose principal duty is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" has, with agencies under his jurisdiction, assigned a burden to those agencies that serve to promote the common good he has pledged, by oath, to uphold.  A penalty that assigns to a certain sector of society the 'un-use' of its free, rightful expression of conscience is a burden that has never, from the foundation of this country, been imposed on individuals or institutions at the Executive level. For this reason, the Board of Directors of Aquinas College has chosen, after considerable deliberation, to join those lawsuits already filed in federal courts which seek to overturn the narrow and restrictive HHS Mandate, a directive which compromises our First Amendment freedoms.  It is regrettable that those agencies and individuals who have publically pledged their lives in service of the needs of all humankind, from conception to natural death, must now defend themselves from a Federal Government that pledged more than 200 years ago to protect, defend, and secure the Blessings of Liberty for each and every American.  May we be vigilant in protecting what is already ours, determined in our pursuit of all that is just and true, and grateful for the sacrifices of those who made the very expression of our most cherished freedoms possible."Aquinas College Files Suit Against 'Contraception Mandate'