“Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs. But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.”

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Those words from Justice Sotomayor will, we predict, go down as among the most notorious ever to issue from the high bench. She is dissenting from a temporary injunction issued by the Supreme Court to protect the rights of Wheaton College under the First Amendment. What the justice is saying is that she or the government knows better than Wheaton what constitutes a burden on Wheaton’s religious beliefs.

Yet Wheaton, a Christian fundamentalist institution, has been shouldering the burdens of godliness for generations. Surely it knows what those burdens are better than the government. What Wheaton objects to is not just that it has to fill out a government form. Its Christian principles don’t object to government forms. It fills out all sorts of government forms. What Wheaton objects to is the substance of the form at issue here.

The form would inform its insurance company that the company must on its own underwrite the contraceptive coverage that Wheaton won’t provide. Why should a religious institution be required to fill out such a form? If the government wants to make sure an insurance company knows something, let the government tell the confounded company. Otherwise it seems that government just wants to humiliate religion, force it to bow to the government rather than God.

That is a bad business. It is shocking that Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg don’t appreciate it. No doubt some will chalk it up to hysteria. That strikes us as an error. The justices are dissenting not because they are women. Women have no special hostility to the laws of God. No, Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg are dissenting because they are leftists. They are wary of, in the church, a competing power.

Our own view is that the best course is to look to the plain language of the First Amendment. It says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment or religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It doesn’t require the filling out of any forms. It doesn’t say “except for birth control.” It says no law. It is language that lights the way for the Supreme Court to make permanent its injunction protecting not only Wheaton but all others who similarly fear God.