Obamacare takes another hit as federal court rules against birth control mandate

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a lower court’s order that the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate substantially burdened the two schools’ exercise of religion.

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.

Cornerstone University does not have to offer employees medical insurance covering drugs that can induce abortion, a federal appeals court ruled this week.

“They contend that the government is coercing them to violate their religious beliefs by threatening to impose severe monetary penalties unless they either directly provide coverage for objectionable contraceptives through their group health plans or indirectly provide, trigger, and facilitate that objectionable coverage through the accommodation process”. “It is one thing to urge that the government may not impose a requirement to provide contraceptive coverage on a religious organization that objects on religious grounds”, the government wrote.

Because of today’s rulings, there is now a clear division of opinion among the circuit courts of appeal as to whether the administration can force religious groups to comply with the Mandate through its so-called “accommodation”.

Obamacare requires insurance plans to pay for preventive health services such as birth control.

“The question here is not whether CNS and HCC have correctly interpreted the law, but whether they have a honest religious belief that their participation in the accommodation process makes them morally and spiritually complicit in providing abortifacient coverage”, wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Roger Wollman. Seven other circuit courts have ruled in similar cases, and all of them sided with the government.

When the Obama administration filed its first response in the Supreme Court to the new group of non-profit cases, in mid-August, it relied upon the unanimous views of appeals courts up to then as an argument against Supreme Court review.

Several faith-based nonprofits have asked the justices to take up their case in the coming term.

Opponents to a federal law that mandates employers provide birth control coverage to employees were handed a victory Thursday in a three-year court battle. Such splits among the courts usually compel the Supreme Court to settle the issue.

The Obama administration now has the option of asking the full Eighth Circuit to rehear the cases en banc or to go, now or later, to the Supreme Court. Leslie Griffin, a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas law school, pointed out that the 8th Circuit’s opinion relied on different reasoning than the other circuits.

The 8th Circuit also said the government could potentially find less restrictive ways to get birth control to the religious not-for-profits’ employees, such as allowing them to get coverage through the federal insurance exchanges or supplying them with government-funded contraception at community centers.

The 8th Circuit emphasized that courts should not be deciding whether something is a substantial burden on religious exercise.