When it comes to the issue of religious rights versus no-cost contraception, the only thing the Supreme Court could agree on was not to decide the case.
In an unsigned opinion issued Monday, the court sent a series of cases back to a raft of federal appeals courts, with instructions for those courts and the parties in the lawsuits to try harder to work things out. “The Court expresses no view on the merits of the cases,” the opinion said.
At issue is the extent to which religiously affiliated employers (such as universities or hospitals) need to participate in the requirement under the Affordable Care Act for most employer health plans to provide no-cost contraception for women.
The government made several changes to the rules over the past four years in an attempt to accommodate the religious employers’ objections while still ensuring that female employees would get contraceptive coverage. But dozens of religious nonprofit employers sued anyway, claiming that even the act of notifying the government of their objections (which would, in turn, trigger a requirement for the government to arrange coverage) made them “complicit” in providing a service they see as sinful.
The court’s opinion, and an accompanying order on several similar cases that were awaiting a decision on whether the high court would take them up, erased all the lower appeals court rulings, all but one of which had sided with the government. That appeared at first glance to put at risk coverage for contraceptives for tens of thousands of employees of the organizations that filed suit.