Supreme Court to weigh states’ challenge of birth control rollback

The U.S. Supreme Court will review a Philadelphia federal judge’s decision last year to block new Trump administration rules that would have let almost any employer deny female workers no-cost birth control coverage by citing religious and moral objections.

In an order late Friday, the justices said they would consider an appeal from White House lawyers, who lost a previous bid to overturn a nationwide injunction imposed by U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in January 2019.

The case marks the third time this small but hotly contested portion of the former President Obama’s signature health care law has drawn high court scrutiny. But it is the first time that the court’s new majority of Republican appointees — including Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — will hear a contraception case.

At issue now is a Trump administration push in 2017 to expand exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s “birth control mandate” with new regulations that would allow all but publicly traded companies, including private colleges and universities that issue student health plans, to opt out on moral grounds.

The attorney generals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged the proposal, saying the rule change could saddle their states with the cost of dealing with thousands of unplanned pregnancies and as many as 127,000 women losing access to no-cost contraception.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed in May, affirming Beetlestone’s earlier decision.

“Two federal courts have blocked this rule and we are confident the Supreme Court of the United States will do the same,” Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, said in a statement.