HBU wins, for now, in birth control case
Houston Baptist University won a preliminary victory this week when the U.S. Supreme Court directed lower courts to reconsider rulings on an Affordable Care Act provision ensuring that employees of religious nonprofits have free access to all federally approved forms of contraception.
The appeal of the Houston school and Marshall’s East Texas Baptist University were among seven combined cases affected by the high court’s unanimous Monday decision.
Represented by the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, the Texas schools turned to the Supreme Court in July after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision favorable to them.
“This reverses the 5th Court of Appeals decision and gives the government a chance to accommodate HBU and ETBU and their religious beliefs,” said Diana Verm, an attorney for the Washington, D.C.=based Beckett Fund.
The Supreme Court on Monday called on lower courts to investigate whether a compromise is possible.
“It is possible that the government will do the right thing,” Verm said.
The Texas case began in 2013 when the Houston university challenged a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulation regarding employees’ free access to 20 federally approved contraceptives.
HBU expressed moral objections to four of the forms — “morning-after pills,” “week-after pills” and two types of intrauterine devices — arguing that they essentially aborted pregnancy.
Federal regulations exempted churches and their auxiliaries, religious orders and businesses with less than 50 employees from the contraception requirement.
Religious nonprofits such as the universities were granted the option to self-identify as being morally opposed to providing such forms of contraception. In doing so, the institutions’ insurance providers or designated third parties then would independently provide contraception drugs or devices.
Government lawyers argued that the option effectively eliminated an institution’s moral culpability for providing such services. Beckett Fund lawyers countered that self-identifying only activated a process by which the objectionable forms of contraception were made available.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled in favor of the schools; the court of appeals overturned the decision.
In a related controversial 2014 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby that “closely held” corporations could be exempt from the contraception regulations on religious grounds.