Despite repeatedly losing its cases over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will continue to force religious organizations to distribute contraceptives – including the “week-after pill” – to their employees.
As a news release at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty states, the Obama administration has been handed “multiple losses in contraceptive mandate cases at the Supreme Court,” including the Hobby Lobby decision, and cases involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College.
Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Obama administration not to enforce the contraceptive mandate against Catholic organizations from Pennsylvania, making this case the government’s sixth loss in a row at the Supreme Court. Currently, four petitions are before the Supreme Court asking for final resolution of the issue by June 2016.
“The government keeps digging the hole deeper,” said Adèle Auxier Keim, legal counsel at the Becket Fund. “Just last week the Supreme Court ordered HHS not to enforce the exact rules they finalized today. But the government still won’t give up on its quest to force nuns and other religious employers to distribute contraceptives.”
“Especially after the Supreme Court’s recent King v. Burwell decision allowed the government to expand its healthcare exchanges, there is no reason at all the government needs religious employers to help it distribute these products,” she added.
As Keim observes, the Obama administration has already told thousands of businesses they need not comply with the HHS mandate at all.
“So why is it continuing to go out of its way to force religious objectors, from nuns to business owners, to do something it is more than capable of doing itself?” she asks.