Thirteen Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration over rules that say employers do not have to pay for birth control coverage for their workers if they oppose them for religious or moral reasons.
“The Trump administration is continuing to trample on women’s rights and access to care with this illegal final rule,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “California will continue the fight against any actions that attempt to restrict women’s access to affordable, quality healthcare.”
Becerra has asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for the rules to be blocked before their planned effect date Jan. 14, 2019.
California, along with Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, already won a case last week that challenged a draft of the rules the Trump administration put out in 2017. Because the latest set of rules was put out in November, however, the exceptions would still go into effect, overriding the other injunction.
Anti-abortion and religious organizations had asked for the Trump administration to allow for certain exceptions to Obamacare’s birth control mandate. Some organizations oppose all forms of birth control and sterilization, while others oppose specific kinds, such as intrauterine devices and emergency contraception, which they say are abortifacients because their labels say they can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus.
The Trump administration has estimated that between 31,700 and 120,000 women across the U.S. could lose access to birth control coverage under its rules.
The birth control mandate is an outgrowth of Obamacare. The law was written to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to decide what type of preventive care health insurance plans should cover without copays, and the Obama administration determined that all forms of birth control should be included.
The obligation previously had exemptions for houses of worship, but not for businesses or nonprofit organizations. Those who didn’t comply would be fined, and after the Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to find a workaround, groups again challenged them in court.
The Trump administration wrote its own rules that loosened the exceptions, which were subsequently challenged by states in court.
