High Court to Tackle Obamacare Contraception Requirement

The Supreme Court, taking up a controversial provision of Obamacare, agreed Tuesday to consider whether a company can refuse to provide contraceptive care to female employees on the grounds that doing so would violate its religious freedom.

It’s a question the Supreme Court has never answered: Does a for-profit company have the right to object to a law on religious grounds?

“This case presents, front and center for the justices to decide, a question that’s been open for a long time: Do companies, not just people and churches, have religious freedom?” said Tom Goldstein, a Supreme Court expert and publisher of the SCOTUSblog website.

The court’s action comes at a time when public support for the Obamacare law, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, is declining due to problems with the website and confusion over whether people can keep existing health insurance policies.

The justices agreed to dive into a dispute over a provision of the law that has generated dozens of lawsuits nationwide — the requirement that private companies provide contraceptive care to their female employees.

The challenge comes from Hobby Lobby Stores, an Oklahoma company with more than 500 arts-and-crafts stores and more than 13,000 full-time employees. The business is run by founder David Green of Oklahoma City and five members of his family.

“We believe wholeheartedly that it is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has been successful. Therefore we seek to honor Him in all that we do,” Green said.

All Hobby Lobby stores close on Sundays, for example. To avoid promoting alcohol, the company does not sell shot glasses.

Green family members say they believe that providing insurance coverage for two types of morning-after pills and two kinds of intrauterine devices would make them complicit in practicing abortions.

They filed a lawsuit claiming that fully complying with the contraceptive mandate in the health care law would violate their religious freedom.

Failing to follow the law, which covers companies that employ more than 50 people, would cost Hobby Lobby at least $1.3 million a day in fines, or almost $475 million a year, the company says.

The Greens “must either violate their faith by covering the mandated contraceptives or pay crippling fines that would destroy their livelihood,” they argued in legal briefs submitted in the case.