Federal judge issues nationwide injunction preventing moral and religious exemptions to birth control coverage News
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Federal judge issues nationwide injunction preventing moral and religious exemptions to birth control coverage

A federal judge in Pennsylvania issued a nationwide injunction on Monday preventing the enforcement of rules allowing employers to deny women health insurance including contraceptive coverage based on moral or religious reasons.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) currently has a requirement detailing that employers must provide their employees with birth control coverage in offered health insurance plans. The ACA goes on further to require group plans and insurances to cover women’s preventative care and screenings.

Under the Trump Administration, the Department of Health & Human Service (HHS) issued two final rules that provided exemptions to employers of the ACA’s mandate due to religious or moral obligations. The Exemptions for Religious Beliefs allows the entity providing insurance discretion on whether or not contraception is covered under the offered plan. Similarly, the Exemptions for Moral Convictions extends this ruling in situations where “nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and individuals” with non-religious moral convictions against contraceptive coverage are exempted from offering it to employees. The final rules, which were published back in November 2018, were to take effect this Monday.

The opinion by US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone explains that the final rules violate federal law. In the case, HHS argues that they met the various requirements of the notice-and-comment rule-making process, and therefore the final rules are valid. However, Beetlestone’s ruling details that the final rules exceed the scope of the HHS’s authority as originally set forth under the ACA, and therefore cannot be implemented.

Beetlestone’s decision comes a day after another federal judge in California issued a similar injunction regarding the same final rules, but only preventing their implementation in 13 states as well as District of Columbia. Through this order, Beetlestone extends the injunction to all states, preventing the rules from taking effect across the country.