The Supreme Court on Friday (November 6) announced that it will take up a case this term on religious freedom and access to contraception.
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But the administration’s attempt to appease religious groups fell flat, and multiple groups, including Little Sisters of the Poor, filed suit arguing that the new rules were still a burden on their rights guaranteed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the First Amendment.
The United States Supreme Court on Friday afternoon said it will consolidate seven cases challenging Obamacare’s birth-control mandate and hear arguments about them next year.
Baylor said the Hobby Lobby case showed how the court approaches these issues. But it ruled past year that closely-held corporations, such as arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby whose owners object to contraception, could hand off providing free coverage of birth control to insurers or others.
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, in his legal pleadings, has argued that the Affordable Care Act’s inclusion of the legal service of contraception was “critical to improving public health” for women and that female employees would more likely receive the care if they didn’t have to pay out-of-pocket costs for it.
The future of a controversial provision meant to help ensure individuals have access to various methods of birth control will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court by the end of June. It comes to the high court as religious objections to gay marriage engender debates around the country.
The groups say that this accommodation is not good enough, as it would make them complicit in the contraception coverage.
But Little Sisters of the Poor argue that the proposed accommodation, nevertheless, forces them act as a conduit for coverage that they find objectionable on religious grounds. While the challenge made its way through the lower courts, 7 circuit courts sided with the government and 1 sided with the religious nonprofits.
Wollman said it was clear the fines imposed for failing to comply with the mandate would be a substantial burden on the groups and that the government did not meet the test of proving there was no other way to meet its goal of providing women with contraceptive coverage.
The law now allows these organizations to say that providing birth control violates their beliefs. The administration says it can’t legally compel church plans to comply with the contraceptive mandate, though the government says Little Sisters nonetheless must provide notice of its religious objection.
“The Little Sisters spend their lives taking care of the elderly poor – that is work our government should applaud, not punish”, said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
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“The court has taken extra action to protect religious nonprofits from the sham accommodation”, said Gregory Baylor, an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Washington firm representing Geneva College.
