SCOTUS Sides With Religious Groups Over Contraception!

The Supreme Court rules that religious groups have the right to deny contraception to those who work for them.

The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania. In a 7-2 decision, the Departments had the authority under the ACA to promulgate the religious and moral exemptions. The rules promulgating the exemptions are free from procedural defects.

Little Sisters vs. Pennsylvania was a U.S. Supreme Court case involving ongoing conflicts between the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) over the ACA's contraceptive mandate. The ACA exempts non-profit religious organizations from complying with the mandate, which for-profit religious organizations objected to.

The case is a result of prior court action from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., in 2014 and Zubik v. Burwell, in 2016, which left the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to come up with new regulations on the mandate.

On election Donald J. Trump implemented an Executive Order to the HHS to bypass the traditional regulation process, leading to HHS devising new rules in late 2017 to give for-profits groups the ability to exempt themselves for both religious or moral objections to the mandate. Several states sued the government, and multiple Circuit Courts placed injunctions on the new rules as arbitrary and capricious and required by neither the ACA or the RFRA, violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This case is a consolidation of two appeals from the injunction placed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Supreme Court ruled on July 8, 2020 in a 7-2 decision that the new rules were valid, as the associated departments had the authority to promulgate the exemptions, and that the process to put the rules in place did not violate the APA.

This decision is a setback for women's groups who believe that religious institutions aren't exempt from providing affordable contraception to their employees.

It smacks down parts of the ACA (aka Obamacare) requirements that employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives.

The conservative wing plus two progressive justices sided with Little Sisters.

The Court sided with Catholic groups.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer believed that Donald J. Trump's executive order can allow companies to block contraception on religious and moral exemptions.

Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg voted against the decision.

The other decision Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru allows religious institutions to uphold their right to fire non-religious people out the cannon.

The ruling makes the First Amendment ministerial exception extends to the adjudication of Morrissey-Berru's and Biel's employment-discrimination claims.

Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru was a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the ministerial exception of federal employment discrimination laws. The case extends from the Supreme Court's prior decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which created the ministerial exception based on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the United States Constitution, asserting that federal discrimination laws cannot be applied to leaders of religious organizations. The case, along with the consolidated St. James School v. Biel (Docket 19-348), both arose from rulings in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found that federal discrimination laws do apply to others within a religious organization that serve an important religious function but lack the title or training to be considered a religious leader under Hosanna-Tabor. The religious organization challenged that ruling on the basis of Hosanna-Tabor.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 7–2 decision on July 8, 2020 that reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling, affirming that the principles of Hosanna-Tabor, that a person can be serving an important religious function even if not holding the title or training of a religious leader, satisfied the ministerial exception in employment discrimination.