Zubik v. Burwell is a case involving Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old order of Roman Catholic nuns who have committed their entire lives to caring for the elderly poor.
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Because their plan is “self-insured”, in addition to stating their religious objection, the government requires their form to also specifically tell their insurance administrator that he has “obligations” to provide the abortifacient and contraceptive coverage himself.
The Supreme Court appeared deadlocked Wednesday along ideological lines as justices weighed another legal challenge to ObamaCare – this one, brought by a religious nonprofit that objects to paying for insurance covering birth control.
The administration’s main argument is that the Department of Health and Human Services has already supplied the religious organizations with an accommodation that will allow the nonprofits to opt out of paying for the abortifacients and birth control in health plans.
At issue is whether the government can find a way to provide free birth control coverage to the thousands of women who work at colleges, hospitals or charities that are run by religious orders or others who view some of the contraceptives to be forms of abortion.
Supreme Court justices sounded evenly split Wednesday when confronted with a dispute between an employer’s right to religious liberty and a female worker’s right to obtain the contraceptives promised under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Clement argued that an accommodation isn’t “immune from RFRA analysis” and that the problem is giving an accommodation to some religious groups, but not all. A 4-4 outcome would leave different rules in place in different parts of the country. The Supreme Court seemed very divided over the arrangement planned by the administration to make religious groups pay for birth control for women covered under the health plans.
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, meanwhile, filed a brief in the case arguing that “all or nothing” demands by religious nonprofits objecting to the HHS accommodation in the end could wind up harming religious liberty.
“They can adhere to their religious beliefs and pay millions of dollars in penalties”, Mr.
As the discussion centered on health exchanges, grandfathered clauses and exemptions, Chief Justice John Roberts summed up the argument with Verrilli as the government’s desire for a “seamless” health care package versus the religious objections of the plaintiffs.
Numerous justices’ remarks focused on a knotty legal question – when the federal government should grant exemptions to the law for religious reasons. They contend the mandate violates the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits the government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion. David Zubik, the Catholic bishop for Pittsburgh, is leading the charge in the case, which consolidated the complaints of objecting Christian universities and groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg feared that the challengers’ arguments could open the floodgates to permit exemptions for everyone. While it suffered a setback in a 2014 case over the so-called “contraceptive mandate” as applied to certain for-profit businesses, it survived two major challenges to its broader insurance requirements and subsidies.
The Little Sisters’ case is one that will likely be affected by the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia back in February.
The case before the court is a hot-button trifecta – health care, abortion and religious freedom – and concerns ObamaCare’s controversial contraception mandate. There is nothing confidential or religious about that information, but they maintain that providing it to the government is a necessary step for the eventual delivery of contraception.
Insurance companies and the government are then responsible for providing the coverage directly to the concerned women.
A tie would uphold lower court rulings, all but one of which went in favor of the government.
Activists protested outside the Supreme Court, which sits opposite Congress.
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Washington lawyer Paul Clement, representing the Little Sisters of the Poor, said the government was not allowing the group to be “conscientious objectors”.
