The Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby overturns the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, but the scope shifts to how the ruling will affect the health care law and the workplace.
The 5-4 decision states that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and gives religious employer and companies the ability to deny birth control coverage to their employees. While the rulings is already being labeled part of the “war on women” and a “religious victory”, there are real implications for employees.
Effects on the Affordable Care Act
Monday’s ruling only ends contraception coverage for religious employees, not the entire or other portions of the ACA (aka Obamacare).”Hobby Lobby answers a technical statutory and regulatory implementation issue – not a broad First Amendment claim as some in the general press have asserted,” according to Lee Beck, who explains the regulatory issues of the ruling.
Prior the to the ruling, nonprofit religious organizations were allowed to be excluded from the mandate and employees could receive birth control coverage through an insurance pool. The decision extends this to for-profit companies, according the the court’s opinion.
[The Department of Health and Human Services] has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives a employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to provide such coverage. The employees of these religious nonprofit corporations sill have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contraceptives … HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections.
A Narrow Ruling
Even though there was the question of whether or not Citizens United would play into this case, the Justices avoided answering whether or not companies can be considered “people” when it comes to religious issues under the First Amendment. According to employment lawyer Richard Cohen, “The Court held that ‘We will not draw the conclusion that, just because courts have recognized the free exercise rights of churches and other religious entities, it necessarily follows that for-profit, secular corporations can exercise religion.'”
The Supreme Court also limited the decision to just the contraceptive mandate so that companies cannot completely deny insurance coverage because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. According to employment lawyer Robin Shea,
It is not a viable solution to tell these companies that they can forgo providing health insurance coverage at all, given the owners’ beliefs that providing health insurance is consistent with their religious beliefs, and given the monetary penalties associated with failing to provide coverage. … The decision’s rationale does not necessarily apply to companies with religious objections to, for example, providing coverage for vaccinations or blood transfusions, or protect religious for-profit employers from claims for unlawful discrimination.
Slippery Slope?
The justices made a special exception to ensure that employers to not use their beliefs as an excuse to discriminate. The court’s opinion calls out protections against sexual orientation, racial and gender discrimination, but employment lawyer Dan Schwartz questions what impact the overall decision will have when it comes to states’ anti-discrimination laws.
For sexual orientation and gender identity claims, “religious corporations” are given a specific exclusion of coverage. Could a company like Hobby Lobby now be considered a “religious corporation” under state law? Or can it claim some other type of exemption given that Connecticut is already excluding some employers? And what is the impact of this decision on the other types of anti-discrimination laws that Connecticut has set up that are much broader than federal law?
The ruling will breed some interesting workplace situations. Since employers are not allowed to ask about workers’ religion, will employees be able to ask about employers’ beliefs to avoid working at a company that won’t pay for contraception?
While the debate (and complaints) over the ruling are already mired in political and emotional rhetoric, it’ll be worth watching to see how far the decision goes and if Congress takes up this fight.