Shutterstock
Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed a massive win to conservative, religious businesses. In a case championed by the Trump Administration, the court ruled that employers could deny contraceptive coverage to employees on the basis of religious beliefs.
This means that religious employers are now no longer bound by law to provide birth control to employees if they hold religious beliefs that view contraceptives as unacceptable.
The move is a huge win for the Trump Administration, which as fought to reduce the scope of Obamacare since coming into power. Previously, lower courts had blocked the attempts to exempt employers from providing contraceptives. Their reasoning had been that employers operating in the US had to abide by US laws, including Obamacare. Their religious beliefs couldn’t exempt them from the law, the courts argued.
The Supreme Court, however, begged to differ. In the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the move would empower religious institutions to make decisions about their own coverage options.
“The only question we face today is what the plain language of the statute authorizes,” the justice noted. “And the plain language of the statute clearly allows the Departments to create the preventive care standards as well as the religious and moral exemptions.”
The majority opinion was cause for celebration among the religious businesses impacted. Now, they are able to use their own judgment when deciding whether to provide contraceptives to employees.
For many businesses, doing so is against their deeply-held beliefs. Catholic organization Little Sisters of the Poor was among the religious groups that championed the case. Thomas sang the praises of the group, singling out their determination in following the case to the Supreme Court.
The court ruled on the topic in a surprising 7-2 split, with two of the court’s four liberal justices siding with the conservative contingent. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, the two dissenting voices, felt as though the majority was being too lenient with religious organizations.
In the minority opinion, Ginsburg wrote “Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree.”
This isn’t the first time the current court has ruled in favor of religious organizations. On the same day, the court ruled that teachers at religious schools were not protected by federal anti-discrimination laws. As such, religious schools can set hiring standards based on their religious beliefs.
