This a major win for religious conservatives against birth control…
The court has affirmed the right for the procedure recently…
But it IS the second ruling elevating religious concerns during this court terms….
First was granting access to funding for religious schools….
Now it is allowing religious objections by employers to cut off access to free abortions to those who work for church based organisations that have Obamacare…Obama , bowing to pressure, had backed away from a hard push on the issue….
The court may buck Trump on some issues….
But on the whole?
It HAS swung to the right….
The separation of church and state is coming down these days…
“We hold that the [administration] had the authority to provide exemptions from the regulatory contraceptive requirements for employers with religious and conscientious objections,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, who was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.
The decision sent the case back to a lower court and instructed it to dissolve a nationwide injunction that had kept the exception from being implemented.
Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer agreed with the court’s conservatives’ decision to send the case back to lower courts, but did not join the majority opinion. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
At issue is the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to expand the types of organizations that could opt out of providing cost-free access to birth control and the extent to which the government should create exemptions to the law for religious groups and nonreligious employers with moral and religious objections.
The Obama administration had narrower exceptions for churches and other houses of worship, and created a system of “accommodations,” or workarounds, for religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities. Those accommodations would provide the contraceptive care, but avoid having the objecting organizations directly cover the cost…