The high court on Wednesday said 7-2, the administration acted properly when it allowed more employers who cite a religious or moral objection to opt-out of providing no-cost birth control required by the Affordable Care Act.
According to government estimates, the exemption would lead to possibly as many as 125,000 women losing their coverage.
The Supreme Court challenge came after Pennsylvania and New Jersy had successfully halted implementation of the regulations in the lower court, the states argued that the federal government failed to follow the legal protocol known as notice-and-comment.
The states said that if the rules went into effect, they would be saddled with increased costs to run their taxpayer-funded family-planning programs.
Ginsburg, joined by Sotomayor, slammed the court’s decision in dissent, writing that in the past, the court had “taken a balanced approach, one that does not allow religious beliefs of some to overwhelm the rights and interests of others who do not share those beliefs. Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree.”
