This is a BIG win for birth control ... IF it survives a potential Supreme Court "review"/appeal ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Quoting Hobby Lobby, Federal Appeals Court Hands Down Big Victory For Birth Control
by Ian Millhiser Posted on November 17, 2014 at 9:09 am

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC handed down a decision on Friday that could neutralize some of the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby if it is upheld on appeal. Hobby Lobby held that employers with religious objections to birth control have broad immunity from federal rules requiring them to include birth control in their employer-provided health plan. Judge Nina Pillard’s decision in Priests For Life v. Department of Health and Human Services, however, indicates that there are limits to an employer’s ability to deny birth control coverage to their employees.

To explain, Hobby Lobby exempted employers with religious objections to birth control from a rule requiring contraceptive coverage to be included in employer-provided health plans. At the same time, however, the Court suggested that it might be possible for the government to accommodate religious objectors while still ensuring that birth control was widely available to women in the workplace. Prior to Hobby Lobby, the government accommodated non-profit employers by allowing them to exempt themselves from the birth control rules so long as they filled out a form notifying the government and their insurance administrator of their objection. In most cases, the insurer would then contract separately with the religious objector’s employees to ensure that they received contraceptive coverage. After Hobby Lobby, the government extended this accommodation to for-profit businesses and allowed religious objectors to invoke the accommodation through an alternative means if they objected to the form the government provided.

Judge Pillard’s opinion holds that this accommodation is enough to satisfy the government’s obligation to religious objectors, and it relies, in part, on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Hobby Lobby to achieve this result. Hobby Lobby described the very same accommodation at issue in Priests For Life as “an alternative that achieves all of the Government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty.” Moreover, as Pillard writes in her opinion, “the Supreme Court stressed that [the accommodation] alleviates the burden on the plaintiffs of having to provide contraceptive coverage and ‘serves HHS’s stated interests equally well.’”

Elsewhere in her opinion, Pillard lays out another flaw in the argument claiming that this accommodation does not go far enough to protect employers with religious objections to birth control. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is the federal law governing religious liberty claims, applies when the federal government “substantially burden[s] a person’s exercise of religion.” Yet, as Pillard explains, the burden in Priests For Life could not be any more insignificant. “All Plaintiffs must do to opt out,” she explains, “is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state.” Indeed, Judge Pillard writes, “[t]he accommodation requires as little as it can from the objectors while still serving the government’s compelling interests.”

So, on the surface, Pillard’s opinion appears likely to survive review by the Supreme Court — if such review is even necessary at all. She relies on the language and reasoning of Hobby Lobby itself to justify her opinion, and she upholds a federal rule that imposes an extraordinarily mild obligation on employers. They must simply fill out a one page form or mail off a very short letter.

There are three reasons, however, why the fate of her decision is less certain. The first is that Pillard was a member of a particularly liberal panel when she decided this case — the other two judges who joined her opinion were appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama. Pillard herself may be the closest thing the federal judiciary has to another feminist icon like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As an attorney, Pillard litigated two major women’s rights cases before the Supreme Court, and as a law professor she authored a pre-Obamacare article arguing that “[t]he lack of a national requirement that insurance plans cover women’s contraceptives is emblematic of a much broader failure to make contraceptive access a priority to reduce the extremely high numbers of unintended pregnancies in the United States.” The five conservative justices, to say the least, do not share Pillard’s commitment to women’s equality and reproductive freedom.

Moreover, while Pillard is correct that federal religious liberty law only applies in cases where someone’s religious exercise is substantially burdened, Justice Alito’s opinion in Hobby Lobby comes very close to reading this requirement out of the law. According to Alito, the Hobby Lobby plaintiffs’ “sincerely believe that providing the insurance coverage demanded by the HHS regulations lies on the forbidden side of the line, and it is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial.”

Finally, despite the language in Hobby Lobby suggesting that the accommodation at issue in Priests For Life is acceptable, the Supreme Court called this language into doubt just days after Hobby Lobby in a case called Wheaton College v. Burwell. Dissenting in Wheaton College, Justice Sonia Sotomayor even implied that the Court’s majority was deceptive in Hobby Lobby. “Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” Sotomayor wrote. “Not so today.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/17/3592804/federal-appeals-court-hands-down-big-victory-for-birth-control/

It astounds me that we are even having this conversation/thread. 40+ years after birth control became commonplace.

Here's some follow-up ~ I almost hope the Priests for Life will test this case ~ I'd love to see them lose ~ emphasis/bolding below is mine, and there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

Anti-Birth Control Group Says It Will Defy Court Order
by Ian Millhiser Posted on November 17, 2014 at 1:05 pm Updated: November 17, 2014 at 2:24 pm

The head of Priests For Life, a group of Catholic clergy that also employs lay people, says his organization will openly defy a federal court order requiring it to comply with the steps it must take to exempt itself from its legal obligation to provide contraceptive coverage in its employee health plan. On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the federal government had taken adequate steps to accommodate groups like Priests For Life that object to birth control on religious grounds. To be clear, no one argues — not the federal government and not the judges who ruled against Priests For Life — that this organization must provide birth control coverage to its employees. Rather, the court order that Priests For Life pledges to defy literally requires them to do nothing but mail off a single-page letter.

As a general rule, federal regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act require employers to include birth control coverage in their employer-provided health plans. The rule exempts employers with religious objections to birth control, however, provided that those employers notify the government and their insurance administrator of their objection. In most cases, the insurer will then contract separately with the objector’s employees to provide them with a separate contraceptive coverage plan.

Priests For Life objects to this scheme because they claim that sending a letter that sets in motion a chain of events that lead to someone receiving contraception violates their religious beliefs. As Father Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life told the Washington Times, his organization will not comply with the law because they believe that doing so would amount to cooperating “in the government’s plan to expand access to birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.” (Although many religious objectors to birth control claim that the forms of contraception at issue in the case are a form of abortion, a broad swath of the medical community disagrees.)

As Friday’s DC Circuit opinion explained, however, religious objectors do not have an absolute right to defy any law they choose not to follow. Rather, they may only invoke federal religious liberty law when they allege that a federal law “substantially burden[s]” their religious exercise. The requirement that they fill out a brief form or send a very short letter, however, hardly qualifies as substantial. As Judge Nina Pillard laid out in her opinion for the court, “[a]ll Plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state.” Indeed, “[t]he accommodation requires as little as it can from the objectors while still serving the government’s compelling interests.”

It is possible, if not entirely certain, that the Supreme Court will reverse the DC Circuit’s decision in Priests For Life. Although there is considerable language in Hobby Lobby suggesting that the accommodation the Obama Administration offered to groups that object to birth control is legally sufficient, the justices appeared to back off that language just a few days after Hobby Lobby was decided. Should Priests For Life’s bid for the extraordinary exemption they currently seek prove unsuccessful, then they are playing with fire by defying the courts. Though the burden required for them to comply with the law is insignificant, the penalties for refusing to comply are substantial.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/17/3593078/anti-birth-control-group-says-it-will-defy-pro-contraception-court-order/

and here i thought this issue was over in 1970. silly me.

What do you expect from people still fighting the US civil war.

So, take away their tax exemption for political activity or just keep sending free birth control to their clientele and bill them for it. Then, take them to court for payment.