The new federal contraceptive-coverage rules give many religious employers a way to avoid directly providing the service to female employees, but that’s not good enough for its opponents.
The
final rules are actually from a number of federal agencies: The Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department, and the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration as well as CMS and HHS.
As we noted in
previous coverage, Affordable Care Act’s
contraception mandate is controversial because it requires insurance plans to pay for it – and some religious employers who maintain such plans consider that a breach of their religious freedoms.
Proposed rules issued in February by HHS, the Labor Department and the IRS offered religious, non-profit employers a
chance to “self-certify” as exempt, and required these employers’ insurers to step up and cover their employees’ contraception.
The final rules appear to follow this model – though,
CNN reports, the final rules tweak “the process by which insurance companies reimburse nonprofit religious organizations” for the contraceptive services the feds now require them to take full responsibility for.
Critics continue to press against the mandate, though, in particular via a lawsuit by employer Hobby Lobby, which wants to be exempt despite its for-profit status (the craft shop chain describes itself as a “biblically founded business”). Hobby Lobby got a boost this week when a federal appeals court allowed their case to continue in a lower court and
exempted the chain from fines related to its non-compliance.
Also, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is handling Hobby Lobby’s suit, called the final rules “
the same old, same old… this doesn’t solve the religious conscience problem because it still makes our non-profit clients the gatekeepers to abortion and provides no protection to religious businesses,” and called for the government to “exempt sincere religious employers completely, as the Constitution requires.”