Hobby Lobby 2.0 – Get Excited

Justice Alito still isn't super sure about this whole birth control thing.

Justice Alito still isn’t super sure about this whole birth control thing.

If you read this blog regularly, you might have thought, “wow, Katie, it’s been like a month since you’ve talked about Hobby Lobby? Does this mean we can finally stop hearing about this nonsense?”

To which I reply: Absolutely not, friends. The nonsense continues, most recently in a temporary stay of the contraceptive mandate issued earlier this month to a religious nonprofit.

You may remember that in the Hobby Lobby ruling, the court seemed to tacitly endorse broadening the work-around the Obama administration had already created for religious nonprofits. After Hobby Lobby, any organization with a religious objection to contraception – for profit or not – could simply fill out a form or send a letter telling the government that this was the case, and the government would contact the insurer independently to ensure contraception was provided and paid for.

It’s this “just fill out the form” accommodation that many religious nonprofits argue doesn’t go far enough, and that the court temporarily exempted some Catholic charities from. As Think Progress explains:

Because sending the letter will set in motion a chain of events that may lead to someone using contraception, conservative “religious liberty” groups have taken the position that sending the letter would make employers “complicit” in the act of providing birth control.

Here’s the thing: Because most health insurance coverage in the United States comes through employers, there’s no practical way for employers to not be “complicit” in providing birth control. The lower courts, particularly the Third Circuit, have pointed this out and said that religious employers need to suck it up and fill out the form. But Alito’s stay signals that the issue isn’t solved: We’re headed for another Supreme Court showdown. Get excited. (Or pissed off, or endlessly frustrated that this is a thing. You know, one of the above.)

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