A majority of millennials disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision last summer to relieve some businesses of funding birth control coverage for workers, says a new survey.
Fifty-eight percent of millennials — defined as those who reached adulthood around 2000 — said they disagree with the Hobby Lobby decision, in a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and released Friday.
In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama administration can’t force privately-owned corporations to pay for the coverage if the owners cite religious objections.
Black and hispanic millennials are more likely than whites to oppose the decision, but only by a small margin. The differences were much larger between political parties, with 73 percent of Democratic millennials saying they believe all corporations should be required to provide the coverage, compared to just 38 percent of Republican millennials.
The Affordable Care Act requires insurance plans to cover certain health services without charging customers extra co-payments. When the Obama administration issued a rule saying those services include all FDA-approved birth control, dozens of businesses and nonprofits sued on religious grounds.
The Supreme Court has said for-profit corporations can opt out but hasn’t yet ruled on whether exemptions the administration has already provided for religious nonprofits are sufficient. Polls show Americans are divided on those questions, but more young people tend to support the birth control coverage requirement.
“Few millennials have moral qualms about birth control, and they generally support policies to make contraception widely available and affordable,” said Robert Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute.
