President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is withdrawing proposed regulations that would have narrowed employers’ ability to opt out of covering birth control for their employees.

HHS issued a notice in the Federal Register on Monday announcing that it was rescinding the rules, “which would have prohibited employers from claiming an exemption based on ‘non-religious moral objections’ to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate,” Politico reported.

HHS said the department was rescinding the proposed regulations to “focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules” in the final days of the Biden administration before Donald Trump returns to the White House. 

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents an order of nuns called Little Sisters of the Poor who have repeatedly legally challenged the ACA’s birth control mandate, celebrated the news, posting to social media that “Christmas came a little early this year.” 

“In 2011, the federal government told this group of nuns to park their convictions at the entrance of the public square or be on the hook for millions of dollars in fines. For the Sisters, that wasn’t much of a choice, so they fought back in court,” the Becket Fund wrote. “With the help of Becket, they defeated the federal government at [the Supreme Court], not once, but twice and are still in court defending their ministry against a group of states led by California and Pennsylvania.”

“Those court battles have been on ice for years due to the new Contraceptive Mandate rule the Biden Administration kept promising to issue,” the statement continues. “As mentioned, the new rule will not be issued, which will hopefully thaw the states’ cases against them, leading to a final victory for nuns whose sole mission is to care for the elderly dying until God calls them home.”

The regulations would have created a loophole for employees of religious organizations who object to birth control to still be able to obtain it for free, according to the report. The rule proposed that those employees would be able to obtain birth control directly from their health care providers at no charge, rather than through their employer.

“By rescinding the rules, HHS leaves in place regulations created by the Trump administration that significantly rolled back the ACA contraception mandate by allowing virtually any objecting employer — be they religious, secular, large or small — to claim an exemption,” according to the report. 

Under the ACA, contraceptive coverage is part of a long list of services health insurers are mandated to cover at no cost to patients. Under a 2018 rule during the Trump administration, private health plans and insurance companies are allowed to forego coverage of contraceptive services if employers object. 

“While those regulations included a mechanism for people to receive contraceptive coverage, the objecting employer, college or university had to opt into the accommodation,” the report notes.