Most of those cases ended at the beginning of the legal inquiry, with courts ruling that the current mandate for employers to provide contraceptive and abortifacient coverage in their health insurance plans was not a substantial burden on the nonprofits’ religious exercise, even though the nonprofits thought it was.
“CNS and HCC two of the plaintiffs face the same consequences for noncompliance as did the plaintiffs in Hobby Lobby“, Judge Roger Wollman wrote for the court.
The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, requires employers to provide insurance for their employees, including access to contraception, sterilization and other preventative services for women.
Opponents of the mandate, and the opt-out provision, have cited an earlier ruling by the high court that private, for-profit companies can refuse on religious grounds to offer birth-control coverage to workers.
Cornerstone University, based in Grand Rapids, had challenged the so-called contraceptive mandate in federal court along with Dordt College, a small religious school in Iowa.
In today’s rulings, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals got it right – and showed why the other courts got it wrong. The Court ruled in Hobby Lobby that for-profit firms owned by a small group of religiously devout owners could not be required to provide the coverage to their employees.
They instead want to have an exemption, which does not extend birth control coverage to plan beneficiaries.
Many Catholic employers object to all forms of contraception, while evangelical groups and others say they’re only opposed to morning-after pills they equate with abortion.
A string of appeals courts has said the government’s accommodation takes care of the problem. The insurers and government take over from there to provide the services.
Cornerstone President Joseph Stowell at the time said the lawsuit was meant to preserve and protect the school’s religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Justice Department, which has called the lawsuits meritless and an attempt to prevent female employees from obtaining coverage, defended the federal government in the cases, but directed The Associated Press’ questions Thursday to the White House, where a statement called the rulings disappointing. In June 2014, after several lower court decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled 5-to-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby – which led to a change in the law that allowed for certain employers to be exempt from the birth control requirement.
“Faith-based colleges and universities should be free to operate according to the faith they espouse and live out on a daily basis”, said Gregory Baylor, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, who argued before the Eighth Circuit in December on behalf of two Christian schools, Dordt College in Iowa, and Cornerstone University in Michigan.
Some of them had been scheduled, but then were postponed, presumably until all of the cases are ready.