Supreme Court Appears Divided on Contraceptive Coverage

[Draggingtree]

Texas Tribune:

Supreme Court Appears Divided on Contraceptive Coverage

by Robert Barnes, The Washington Post, March 23, 2016

 

The U.S. Supreme Court was divided during a tense oral argument Wednesday over whether religiously affiliated organizations such as universities, hospitals and charities should be exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employees receive contraceptive coverage.

 

The court’s four liberals were supportive of the Obama administration’s position that it has offered an acceptable accommodation for such organizations that respects their beliefs and ensures that women receive the coverage they are entitled to under the law.

 

The accommodation requires the groups to state their objections and then allows the government to work with the groups’ insurers to provide the coverage without the organization’s involvement or financial support.

[Draggingtree]

Argument analysis: On new health care case, a single word may tell it all

 

By Lyle Denniston on Mar 23, 2016 at 3:49 pm

Analysis

The Obama administration had four Supreme Court Justices quite plainly on its side Wednesday in the latest fight over the new health care law, but that may be all that it had because there was no way to stop other Justices from thinking — and thinking negatively — about a single word: “hijacking.” In a real sense, the fate of the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate, at least for the near future, could well be bound up with that word.

 

“Hijacking” is what a long list of religious institutions that object for reasons of faith to contraceptive methods have used to describe what they say the federal government will do to their health-care plans as it moves toward providing free birth control to those institutions’ female employees and college students. And, if there was a startling moment during the ninety-four-minute hearing on Zubik v. Burwell, it came when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy deployed that word in obvious sympathy to those institutions.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/argument-analysis-on-new-health-care-case-a-single-word-may-tell-it-all/

[Draggingtree]

A “view” from the Courtroom: Sister Act

By Mark Walsh on Mar 23, 2016 at 5:35 pm

Any graduate of Catholic elementary school or CCD (that’s Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, or religious training for public school Catholics) might be trembling a bit upon entering the Supreme Court this morning.

 

The first person they might see is Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. Just about a month ago, Wuerl helped preside over the funeral mass for the late Justice Antonin Scalia at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

 

Next to Cardinal Wuerl, in the second row of the public gallery, is the Most Rev. David A. Zubik, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, and to his right is the Most Rev. Lawrence T. Persico, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Erie, Pa.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/a-view-from-the-courtroom-sister-act/#more-240452

[Draggingtree]

Women’s Equality Means Taking Our Beliefs Seriously

It is not only wrong but harmful to young women for the contraceptive mandate to frame the issue of women’s equality as merely an issue of preventative health care.

 

MARCH 24, 2016 By Callie Hyde

It is 2016, and it is the year of the woman. A woman is running for president, and we are becoming astrophysicists and lawyers, teachers and mothers; we are fighting for our rights on the national scale.

I am a 22-year-old woman who will attend Georgetown University Law Center in the fall. The world is open to me in ways it was not for my mother or my grandmother. I am both grateful for the advancements in women’s rights that have been made, and dedicated to continuing that necessary work.

 

However, I reject the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) notion that the whole of women’s rights can be boiled down to birth control and who provides it. It is not only wrong but harmful to young women to frame the issue of women’s equality as merely an issue of preventative health care. Furthermore, I find it offensive that a group of women

http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/24/womens-equality-means-taking-our-beliefs-seriously/