A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s moral and religious exceptions to the Obamacare birth control mandate from going into effect in five states.
The ruling, from a split three-judge panel, upholds a preliminary injunction by the district court. The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic organization that cares for people in nursing homes, and by March for Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group.
Judges John Clifford Wallace, a nominee of former President Richard Nixon, and Susan Graber, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, upheld the injunction.
Wallace, who authored the opinion, wrote that the states “will incur significant costs as a result of their residents’ reduced access to contraceptive care.”
He wrote that women who don’t receive coverage for contraception will seek to have them paid for through state programs, and that if they cannot access it they will become pregnant, incurring more costs to states. He added that when women have a an unplanned child it can get in the way of their educational goals and ability to join the workforce, reducing their tax contributions.
California, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, will not have to abide by the Trump administration’s rules that say employers do not have to pay for birth control coverage for their workers if they have any religious or moral objections to them. The change is set to take effect elsewhere in the U.S. at the beginning of 2019.
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 the new rule.
The judge who dissented, Andrew Kleinfeld, an appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush, said he would have revoked the injunction because the states lack standing.
“The reason they lack standing is that their injury is what the Supreme Court calls ‘self-inflicted,’ because it arises solely from their legislative decisions to pay these moneys,” he wrote.
The groups that appealed signaled the fight was not over. Diana Verm, the attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said in a statement the ruling forced the organization to “spend another Christmas defending their religious exemption from the HHS mandate in court.”
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 work-around, groups again challenged them in court.
The Trump administration wrote its own rules that loosened the exceptions, which were subsequently challenged by the states in court. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that a group of Christian organizations that sued under the Obama administration did not need to abide by the 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.
