Federal judge: Moral objections enough to override HHS contraception mandate

[Valin]

Hot Air:

Ed Morrissey

August 31, 2015

 

In a stunning decision, a federal judge permanently barred the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing the contraception mandate under ObamaCare against an employer for moral rather than explicitly religious grounds. Judge Richard Leon, the same DC district court judge that ruled the NSA phone collection program unconstitutional (and was reversed last week), rebuked the federal government for violating the Equal Protection clause by only allowing religious groups a waiver for objections to contraception and other products and services. Ruling in favor of March for Life, Leon said that the 14th Amendment demands equal protection for similarly situated entities. If the moral objection is the same as the religious objection, HHS has to honor them both.

 

When HHS argued that March for Life wasn’t eligible for a waiver because it wasn’t a religious organization, Leon ruled that HHS missed the point:

 

(Snip)

 

 

This is the main reason:

 

 

Only applying a waiver for religious organizations when the objection is the same, and the reason for HHS’ accommodation is the same — that employees aren’t likely to want contraception through employers anyway — amounts to “regulatory favoritism,” Leon writes. In an effort to apply the mandate as broadly as politically possible, HHS has run roughshod over moral objections to their policy that are identical to the exceptions granted, and “HHS provides no principled basis, other than the semantics of religious tolerance, for its distinction.”

 

(Snip)

 

Don’t pop the bubbly yet. This will get sent to the DC appellate court, and likely to the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see how those courts might try to parse out distinctions where Leon claims none exist.