Court’s Hobby Lobby Decision Could Bode Ill for Faith Groups

The Supreme Court’s ruling this week that corporations can deny birth-control coverage to employees on religious grounds may not presage similar success for the host of faith-based nonprofit institutions challenging the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, according to a Religion News Service analysis.

Several legal and religious-liberty experts note that Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the case brought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties cited the government’s failure to offer for-profit firms an accommodation like that granted faith nonprofits, which can sign a form designating a third party to pay for and provide contraceptive coverage. Justice Anthony Kennedy made a similar point in his concurring opinion.

Faith groups contend the compromise still violates their religious freedom by requiring them to countenance birth control. But University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock said the court’s suggestion “that the government’s accommodation for nonprofits is a less restrictive means for the for-profits does not bode well for the nonprofits.”

The Obama administration cited the Hobby Lobby ruling Wednesday in opposing a nonprofit’s legal challenge to the contraceptive rule, reports The Wall Street Journal.

In a court filing involving Wheaton College, an Illinois Christian institution challenging the mandate, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote that the Hobby Lobby decision “rested on the premise that these accommodations ‘achieve all of the government’s aims’ underlying the preventive-health services coverage requirement ‘while providing greater respect for religious liberty.’”