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Washington-Watch.
Court Strikes Down ACA's Birth Control Mandate. Published: Nov 1, 2013.
By David Pittman, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today.
Washington-Watch
Court Strikes Down ACA's Birth Control Mandate
Published: Nov 1, 2013
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said requiring companies to cover employees' contraception was a violation of its owners' religious rights. The 2-1 decision marks another defeat for the mandate.
The ACA requires health plans to cover without cost-sharing preventive services, including FDA-approved birth control such as levonorgestrel (Plan B emergency contraceptive). The ACA's contraceptive mandate took effect Aug. 1, 2012.
The plaintiff in this case, Sidney, Ohio-based Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, sued, seeking an injunction, a request denied by a lower court.
They appealed and the higher court sided with their argument that the ACA's birth control mandate places undue burden on their religious freedom and overrides the government's argument that contraception is a medically necessary service.
"Even giving the government the benefit of the doubt, the health concerns underpinning the mandate can be variously described as legitimate, substantial, perhaps even important, but it does not rank as compelling, and that makes all the difference," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote on behalf of the court.
Freshway employs about 400 people and is self-insured. The company would have to pay roughly $14 million a year in penalties if it failed to comply with the law.
Judge Harry Edwards argued in a dissent that it was the company -- not Francis and Philip Gilardi, the brothers who own it -- that was providing the coverage and therefore the brothers weren't having their religious rights violated.
A rule from the Department of Health and Human Services finalized this summer exempted churches and other nonprofit religious organizations that object to contraceptive coverage. But private businesses such as Freshway weren't exempt.
In July, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction to arts-and-crafts retail giant Hobby Lobby until its objections could be resolved. The company was set to face penalties of $1.3 million a day if it didn't provide FDA-approved contraceptive methods in its health plans, which cover 13,000 employees.
Friday's ruling "confirms what the 10th Circuit in our Hobby Lobby case said: Individuals do not have to forfeit their faith to make a living, and the government is wrong to force family businesses to subsidize products against their deeply held religious beliefs," Eric Baxter, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby, told MedPage Today in a statement.
He said 30 courts have now reached a similar conclusion, with only five disagreeing.
"The bipartisan-passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act plainly states that no one can be compelled to violate his or her conscience, in this case, by providing or purchasing things like abortion pills ... The D.C. court has affirmed that this principle applies to everyone, be they small business owners or nuns," Ashley McGuire, senior fellow with the Catholic Association, said in a statement.
There was no word at press time on whether the federal government planned to appeal the ruling.
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