“Petitioners have clarified that their religious exercise is not infringed where they ‘need to do nothing more than contract for a plan that does not include coverage for some or all forms of contraception, ‘ even if their employees receive cost-free contraceptive coverage from the same insurance company…”
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It’s a far cry from the ambitious case the court’s original nine justices envisioned when they combined seven court cases into one, omnibus case on the HHS mandate.
So what does this mean for your access to contraceptive care?
The Obama administration had already decreed that religious nonprofits could opt out of providing the care by providing the government with a two-page form stating their objection. Although the mandate made exceptions for houses of worship, the government was still issuing fines to faith-based organizations such as schools, hospitals, and charities who were refusing to cover contraception because doing so would conflict with their religious views.
“It’s really a win-win situation for both sides”, Smith responds, describing it as the government gets to give contraceptives to whichever employees of these groups want them. In this case, the religious groups object to emergency contraceptives, including the so-called morning-after-pill, and intrauterine devices, which they liken to so-called “abortifacients” – or drugs that induce an abortion. It is the requirement to make such a submission that Zubik and a number of other non-profits (the petitioners) have challenged as substantially burdening the exercise of their religion, in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. OneNewsNow posed that question to Hannah Smith, senior counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Little Sisters of the Poor.
In the Texas case, a federal district court previously sided with the universities, blocking the mandate from going into effect.
This year’s Supreme Court Obamacare case, the fourth in five years, has produced a stalemate.
Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor also said in her concurring opinion, according to an earlier report, that the lower courts can reconsider the argument of both sides “in light of petitioners’ new articulation of their religious objection and the Government’s clarification about what the existing regulations accomplish, how they might be amended, and what such an amendment would sacrifice”.
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The outcome suggests the court lacked a majority for a significant ruling and is perhaps another example of how the justices have been affected by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
