A federal judge has blocked a rule from the first term of the Trump administration that provided broad exemptions to religious employers who don’t want to offer health insurance coverage for birth control as required by the Affordable Care Act.
U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, an Obama appointee, issued the ruling on Wednesday in the case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and State of New Jersey v. Donald Trump, et al.
The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns dedicated to charity that had its challenge of the contraceptive mandate heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in the past, was a defendant-intervenor in the case.
Beetlestone concluded that the religious exemption rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2017 “greatly expanded that exemption and accommodation framework” and allowed “more entities to stop providing contraceptive coverage, which will result in more women residents seeking contraceptive care through State-funded programs.”
“The States have thus shown a causal connection between the Final Rules and their financial injury, and Little Sisters does not dispute as much in its briefing,” wrote Beetlestone.
Beetlestone also wrote with concern that the religious exemption rule “also extends exemptions to organizations that are unlikely, if ever, to be capable of maintaining a religious objection” and “provides no backstop to who can claim an exemption.”
The decision declined to address the Little Sisters’ constitutional arguments, concluding that they “fall well outside the scope of the matter before the Court and therefore need not be addressed.”
The Little Sisters are being represented by Becket, a religious liberty-centered legal group that has successfully argued litigation before the Supreme Court.
Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and lead attorney for the Little Sisters, said in a statement released Wednesday that he believes the ruling “blessed an out-of-control effort by Pennsylvania and New Jersey to attack the Little Sisters and religious liberty.”
“It’s bad enough that the district court issued a nationwide ruling invalidating federal religious conscience rules. But even worse is that the district court simply ducked the glaring constitutional issues in this case, after waiting five years and not even holding a hearing,” Rienzi said.
“It is absurd to think the Little Sisters might need yet another trip to the Supreme Court to end what has now been more than a dozen years of litigation over the same issue. We will fight as far as we need to fight to protect the Little Sisters’ right to care for the elderly in peace.”
In May 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision that the Little Sisters and dozens of other religious nonprofits could not be forced to provide their employees with birth control and abortifacients via their healthcare coverage plan.
In 2018, the Trump administration issued a rule giving an exemption to any employer with religious objections to the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
The new rule was the subject of legal challenge from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with the Supreme Court ruling 7-2 in July 2020 to reject the lawsuit on technical grounds.
