Years of litigation over the Obamacare mandate for coverage of early abortion pills, birth control and sterilization, culminated in seven cases under the title Zubik v. Burwell. All that time, religious organizations like Christian colleges and nuns told the courts that the government could achieve its goals another way, without forcing them to violate their faith.
The government already provides birth control to low income women through a dozen statutes including Medicaid and Title X. Obamacare’s insurance exchanges now offer plans covering these same items to people whose employers may have stopped offering health insurance.
Meanwhile, the government allows some major corporations not to comply with the birth control mandate at all, leaving millions of women without it, and the government gives those women no assistance. And after changing its rules multiple times, the government fully exempted church-related organizations and some schools from this mandate.
So why wouldn’t the government extend that exemption to devout religious groups like my client Geneva College? Why are they deemed less religious than a church, and why must they amend their health plan contracts to make sure the coverage flows?
The Supreme Court seemed to have similar questions. After oral argument in March, it took the extraordinary step of asking the government and the religious groups to submit new briefs asking whether the government could in fact achieve its goal of delivering birth control coverage to religious groups’ employees without making the group take any additional steps beyond telling their insurer they don’t want the coverage.
The government’s response to that question was a sheepish “yes” — they could order the coverage at least in some cases — but the administration preferred that the court still allow it to force religious groups to play along in the delivery process.
In the Supreme Court’s new unanimous ruling it took the government at its word. If it can deliver the coverage without forcing the religious groups to execute documents ensuring the coverage’s delivery, then it should do that.
Significantly, the court insisted that “the government may not impose taxes or penalties on petitioners for failure to provide the relevant notice.” This order eliminates the teeth attached to the Obama administration’s faux “accommodation” process, which still subjected religious groups to massive fines unless they cooperated in helping provide coverage to which they have a religious objection.
The court then “vacated” seven different lower court rulings which had gone in the government’s favor. This wipes the slate clean of most precedential cases that the government was using against religious organizations.
Zubik, Geneva College, Little Sisters of the Poor and the other specific cases will now go back down to the lower courts to see where the issue goes from here.
The principle established this week, however, is that the government should be blocked from penalizing faith based organizations if it has another way to achieve its goal. They should not be forced to violate the convictions that led them to promote charity, education and volunteerism in society in the first place.
Matt Bowman is senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents one Pennsylvania Christian college and four Oklahoma Christian universities in lawsuits challenging the Obama administration’s abortion-pill mandate. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
