The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a Trump administration rule that allows employers to opt out of covering birth control for their workers.
The case consolidates two challenges, Trump v. Pennsylvania and Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania. It will explore whether businesses have the right to deny birth control to their workers because of religious or moral objections to the products.
Anti-abortion and religious organizations had asked for the Trump administration to allow for certain exemptions to the birth control mandate that stems from Obamacare. 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 induce an abortion because their labels say they can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus.
The religious exemption set under President Trump applies to any type of employer, but the moral exemption doesn’t apply to publicly traded businesses or to government entities. The administration has estimated that between 6,400 and 127,000 women would be affected.
Liberal states sued over the rules, and they have been blocked in different federal courts.
The Supreme Court has taken up the question of a birth control mandate twice before. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it looked at whether the Obama administration had been overly burdensome on employers with religious or moral objections by requiring them to cover all forms of birth control.
Under Obama, the rule had exemptions for houses of worship but not for businesses or nonprofit organizations. Those who didn’t comply would be fined. The Supreme Court determined the rules violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and asked the Obama administration to find a workaround to the initial rule.
After the administration did so, groups again challenged the Obama administration in court, though the Supreme Court left the question unresolved. The Trump administration took up the rules again for another look, saying they had been unresolved, before writing broader exemptions.
The mandate about birth control doesn’t specifically appear in 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.
