Fox News pushed various myths about the latest challenge to the contraceptive mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy falsely accusing the Obama Administration of forcing “religious freedom [to] take a backseat to Obamacare.”

In a January 15 segment on Fox & Friends, Doocy and his guest, National Review Online editor Rich Lowry, discussed a new challenge to the contraception mandate provision in the ACA. This latest challenge, brought by a group of Catholic nuns from the charity Little Sisters of the Poor, argues that the mandate violates the religious freedom of the nuns because they disagree with the use of contraceptives.

This is not the first time Fox News has misrepresented the Little Sisters case. The fact is, the nuns are already exemptible from the mandate, as both Doocy and Lowry initially point out in the segment. All the sisters need to do is sign a form registering their religious objection -- a requirement that Lowry calls “wrong” and “perverse.” For his part, Doocy said more Catholics should be given a “bigger carve out” under the ACA because they “just don't believe in this stuff”:

Doocy and Lowry's framing of this issue as an assault on religious freedom -- “Little Sister vs. Big Government” -- is bizarre. Although Lowry begins the segment by admitting the nuns are exempt from the mandate, he still somehow concludes that the administration “should let the nuns off the hook.” This upending of precedent would undermine all similar exemption mechanisms for religious objectors whose stance requires someone else to follow the law in their stead. Doocy undercuts his own argument that the government doesn't provide enough exemptions for Catholics, who “by and large, stand against abortion and contraception” when he concedes that “they're more in favor it, for various reasons, these days.” And in fact, 98% of sexually active Catholics use or have used contraceptives in their lives.

Lowry ended the segment by explaining that, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the government cannot substantially burden religious freedom without a “compelling governmental interest.” Whether or not signing a form is a “substantial burden” remains to be seen, but Lowry disingenuously suggests that the only compelling interest at play here is that the mandate apply to everyone, even though the mandate has improved access to contraception and other preventive care services for up to 47 million women. But apparently that's not compelling enough for Fox News.