ScotusBlog is tracking the many cases winding their way up different federal avenuesend up on the SC docket by the end of the year - but if not, next year for certain.
Here's text from ScotusBlog's story about the Sevent Circuit Court's 2-1 decision to temporarily block the federal government from enforcing the contraception requirement:
Under the new health care law, employers who do not qualify for exemptions must provide their women workers of child-bearing age — without cost — with insurance coverage for the full range of contraceptive drugs and other birth control and pregnancy prevention measures. For non-exempt employers, the mandate is to become effect next Tuesday, January 1. Religious institutions, such as churches, are exempt from it, while other religious-affiliated entities — such as schools, colleges and hospitals — are temporarily exempted from it until the federal government writes a new final rule on implementation of the mandate. What will be in the final rule is expected to be known between now and the end of March.
The majority of the lawsuits challenging the mandate around the country have been filed by religious institutions, but a significant number have been filed by profit-making companies run by people who have religious objections to birth control drugs and devices that they believe will lead to abortion, which they oppose as a matter of their faith.
The majority of the lawsuits challenging the mandate around the country have been filed by religious institutions, but a significant number have been filed by profit-making companies run by people who have religious objections to birth control drugs and devices that they believe will lead to abortion, which they oppose as a matter of their faith.
The Illinois case involves a construction company, Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, Inc., of Highland, Illinois. A Roman Catholic couple, Cyril and Jane Korte, own about eighty-eight percent of the company, which employs ninety full-time workers. About seventy of those are members of a labor union, which provides them with health insurance. The Kortes provide health insurance for the other twenty employees. The Kortes have told the courts that they did not realize until recently that their health plan for those twenty workers did provide for coverage of contraceptives. They want to drop that plan as of January 1, and set up a new one without that coverage, and they sued to get the right to do so free of the new law’s mandate.
The Kortes’ main challenge is under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and it was that challenge that the Seventh Circuit majority concluded is likely to succeed when their appeal is decided. The new mandate, it concluded, probably will be shown to impose a “substantial burden” on the couple’s religious faith and on the religious principles on which they run their company. The panel majority also concluded that the federal government has not yet shown a compelling interest, in assuring contraceptive coverage, that was significant enough to justify the burden on the family’s faith.
