WASHINGTON — In a 7-2
ruling July 8, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump administration rules
that give employers more ability to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage
in their health plans.
The decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the
administration had "the authority to provide exemptions from the
regulatory contraceptive requirements for employers with religious and
conscientious objections."
“This is a saga that did not need to occur. Contraception is not
health care, and the government should never have mandated that employers
provide it in the first place,” said Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski,
chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious
Liberty, and Kansas City Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, chairman of the
Committee on Pro-Life Activities, in a joint statement.
“The Little Sisters of the Poor is an international congregation
that is committed to building a culture of life. They care for the elderly poor,”
it said. “The government has no right to force a religious order to cooperate
with evil. We welcome the Supreme Court’s decision. We hope it brings a close
to this episode of government discrimination against people of faith.”
Dissenting votes were by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia
Sotomayor.
The case examined if the expansion of the conscience exemption
from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate violated the health care
law and laws governing federal administrative agencies.
It highlighted — as it has before when the Affordable Care Act's
contraceptive mandate has come before the high court — the Little Sisters of
the Poor, the order of women religious who care for the elderly poor. The
sisters were represented, as they have been previously, by Becket, a religious
liberty law firm.
The oral arguments were the combined cases of Little Sisters of
the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania.
A recap of the sisters' involvement in this case goes back to
2013 when religious groups and houses of worship were granted a religious
exemption by the Supreme Court from the government's mandate to include
contraceptive coverage in their employee health plans. Three years later,
religious nonprofit groups challenged the requirement to comply with the
mandate and the court sent the cases back to the lower courts with instructions
for the federal government and the challengers to try to work out an agreeable
solution.
Then in 2017, religious groups were given further protection from
the contraceptive mandate through an executive order issued by President Donald
Trump requiring the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to write a
comprehensive exemption to benefit religious ministries, including the Little
Sisters of the Poor, from the contraceptive mandate. HHS provided this
exemption in 2018, but several states challenged it, including California,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, saying HHS didn't have the power to give this
exemption.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey obtained a nationwide injunction
against the rules protecting religious objectors from the contraceptive
mandate; that injunction was then upheld by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, based in Philadelphia.
This is where the Little Sisters come back because they appealed
the circuit court's ruling and asked the Supreme Court to step in.
In one of the two consolidated cases, Trump v. Pennsylvania, the
administration argued that the exceptions to the contraceptive mandate for
religious groups were authorized by the health care law and required by the
1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as RFRA.
Lawyers for Pennsylvania and New Jersey said the administration
lacked statutory authority to issue such regulations and said the government
did not follow proper administrative procedures.
The second case examines whether the Little Sisters of the Poor
had the standing to appeal the 3rd Circuit ruling since a separate court order
had already allowed them to refuse to provide contraceptive coverage in their
employee health plans.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed a friend-of-the-court
brief siding with the Little Sisters of the Poor, which stressed that the court
needs to set the record straight, particularly with its interpretation of RFRA,
which says "governments should not substantially burden religious exercise
without compelling justification."
The brief said there was a compelling need to review this case
not only because the 3rd Circuit Court decision conflicts with other Supreme
Court rulings on this topic in Hobby Lobby and Zubik decisions, but because its
ruling "threatens to reduce one of America's leading civil rights laws to
virtual impotence," referring to RFRA.
It emphasized that RFRA essentially hangs in the balance because
the appeals court "adopted a grudging interpretation of the statute that
will, unless reversed, too often deny protection for religious people and
institutions."