The Supreme Court has told a lower court to reconsider whether the University of Notre Dame gets to entirely bow out of the Obama administration’s birth control mandate.
The Catholic school was told a year ago by a federal appeals court that it must abide by rules from the administration laying out how its employees and students should get insurance coverage for birth control. Because it’s a religious school, Notre Dame can ask an insurer to provide the coverage directly so it doesn’t have to fund contraception, which it morally opposes.
But the Supreme Court now says that decision should be revisited, in light of the 2014 Hobby Lobby ruling, where the justices exempted some for-profit businesses from complying with the mandate. The requirement stems from the Affordable Care Act, which says employers must provide workers with certain health insurance benefits.
On Monday, the justices vacated the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and instructed the court to reconsider it.
The move could signal that some justices are sympathetic to Notre Dame’s argument that it shouldn’t have to participate in the process of providing birth control coverage at all. Under the administration’s rules, the school must sign a form delegating the coverage responsibility to a third party.
“This is a major blow to the federal government’s contraception mandate,”said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “For the past year, the Notre Dame decision has been the centerpiece of the government’s effort to force religious ministries to violate their beliefs or pay fines to the IRS.”
Dozens of religious nonprofits have sued the Obama administration over the requirement. The Supreme Court hasn’t taken any of those cases up yet, but it has excused some organizations including Little Sisters of the Poor from the requirement to sign the form until lower courts rule.
Those opposing the lawsuits say the administration had provided adequate exemptions from the mandate for religious groups who oppose all birth control or certain kinds of it.
“Religious freedom is a fundamental American value, and it should be protected,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “But it’s absurd to assert that simply filling out a form stating an objection violates religious freedom. What Notre Dame and others really object to is women getting the contraceptive coverage they need. That’s discrimination, plain and simple.”
