{"id":226964,"date":"2020-07-08T10:51:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T15:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=226964"},"modified":"2020-07-09T11:27:53","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T16:27:53","slug":"little-sisters-poor-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Sisters of the Poor win at Supreme Court against contraception mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>In a 7-2 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/19pdf\/19-431_5i36.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ruling<\/a> on Wednesday, The Supreme Court of the United States upheld rules allowing employers to opt out of paying for birth control in their health care plans based on their religious beliefs. In the decision of\u00a0<em>Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania,\u00a0<\/em>Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the majority opinion which Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined. Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer concurred while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.<\/p>\n<p>The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (commonly referred to as ObamaCare) required employers to provide &#8220;preventive care&#8221; without &#8220;any cost sharing requirements&#8221; but, said Thomas, failed to specify what was meant by &#8220;preventive care.&#8221; Guidelines stated that health care plans must provide coverage for all FDA approved contraception. However, the Trump Administration later allowed for exemptions to the mandated contraception coverage for employers if those employers held moral or religious objections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By its terms, the ACA leaves the Guidelines&#8217; content to the exclusive discretion of HRSA [Health Resources and Services Administration],&#8221; wrote Thomas. &#8220;Under a plain reading of the statute, then, we conclude that the ACA gives HRSA broad discretion to define preventive care and screenings and to create the religious and moral exemptions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-case-isnt-just-providing-birth-control\/\"><em>Little Sisters case isn\u2019t just about providing birth control<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The ruling is seen as a big win for organizations and <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-another-corporation-challenging-the-hhs-mandate-just-one-day-after-the-hobby-lobby-ruling\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">businesses<\/a> associated with deeply held religious beliefs, many of which have been fighting the contraceptive mandate for years. Little Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns, argued that the use of contraception to prevent new human life is immoral and the store chain <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/fact-hobby-lobby-does-offer-coverage-for-contraception\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hobby Lobby<\/a> argued in its case that certain hormonal birth control can cause abortions to occur. Thomas cited the <em>Hobby Lobby<\/em> decision in his <em>Little Sisters<\/em>&#8216; opinion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Additionally, we expressly stated in <em>Hobby Lobby<\/em> that the contraceptive mandate violated RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993] as applied to entities with complicity-based objections,&#8221; wrote Thomas. &#8220;Thus, the potential for conflict between the contraceptive mandate and RFRA is well settled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thomas continued that in <em>Hobby Lobby<\/em>, the Court &#8220;left it to the Federal Government to develop and implement a solution. At the same time, we made it abundantly clear that, under RFRA, the Departments [Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and the Treasury] must accept the sincerely held complicity-based objections of religious entities. That is, they could not &#8216;tell the plaintiffs that their beliefs are flawed&#8217; because, in the Departments&#8217; view, &#8216;the connection between what the objecting parties must do . . . and the end that they find to be morally wrong . . . is simply too attenuated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stating that for more than 150 years, the Little Sisters have been sacrificing to care for those in need, Thomas said they have spent the last seven years fighting &#8220;for the ability to continue in their noble work without violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.&#8221; He concluded that the Departments had the authority to create the religious and moral exemptions and therefore those exemptions stand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveactionnewsonline\/\">\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"at-below-post addthis_tool\" data-url=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/gucci-first-model-down-syndrome-viral\/\" data-title=\"AWESOME: Gucci's first model with Down syndrome goes viral\" data-description=\"&quot;Inclusion of all people in the industry is so important, not only because it the right thing to do ethically, but also makes good business sense.&quot; ~Zebedee\">\n<div id=\"atstbx2\" class=\"at-resp-share-element at-style-responsive addthis-smartlayers addthis-animated at4-show\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"at-9e4a2548-7bb6-401c-9a4d-5e47306dda30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a 7-2 ruling on Wednesday, The Supreme Court of the United States upheld rules allowing employers to opt out of paying for birth control in their health care plans based on their religious beliefs. In the decision of\u00a0Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania,\u00a0Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the majority [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":223125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3473,11,9459],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Little Sisters of the Poor win at Supreme Court against contraception mandate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in a 7-2 ruling. Religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate of the ACA will stand.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Little Sisters of the Poor win at Supreme Court against contraception mandate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in a 7-2 ruling. Religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate of the ACA will stand.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-07-08T15:51:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-07-09T16:27:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/GettyImages-517064530-little-sisters-of-the-poor.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1198\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nancy Flanders\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nancy Flanders\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Nancy Flanders\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/d61ca3dd1aacf12635bdf71d75c328ef\"},\"headline\":\"Little Sisters of the Poor win at Supreme Court against contraception mandate\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-07-08T15:51:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-09T16:27:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\"},\"wordCount\":524,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Newsbreak\",\"Politics\",\"Top Story on Homepage\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/little-sisters-poor-supreme-court\/\",\"name\":\"Little Sisters of the Poor win at Supreme Court against contraception mandate\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-07-08T15:51:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-09T16:27:53+00:00\",\"description\":\"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in a 7-2 ruling. 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