6th Circuit Says Your Boss Can’t Say No to Your Birth Control

In a unanimous decision in Autocam v. Sebelius, the 6th Circuit held that a for-profit, secular company is not a ‘“person’ capable of ‘religious exercise’” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) (RFRA is a federal law that protects an individual’s exercise of religious freedom from substantially burdensome laws where the government did not have a compelling interest in passing the law). Based on this holding, the Autocam companies – Michigan-based manufacturers of auto and medical supplies – can’t bring a RFRA challenge to the Obamacare rule requiring health insurance plans to cover the full range of birth control methods. Oh, and the 6th Circuit held that Autocam’s owners also can’t challenge the rule under RFRA because the birth control requirement is on the company, not the owners.

This means that Autocam’s female employees and dependents will not have access to coverage for the birth control method that’s appropriate for them, without cost sharing. In other words, they finally get to take advantage of this fabulous Obamacare benefit that many of us have been enjoying for a year now.

What else does this mean? It means that health care decisions stay between you and your provider, NOT your boss. And it means that birth control IS health care and can’t be stripped away from health insurance coverage just because a boss objects to it. I mean, seriously, can you imagine the total uproar if bosses refused to cover children vaccines or blood transfusions?? Well, that could be the world we live in if these bosses get their way in the birth control challenges….

So thank you to the panel of female judges (one Clinton, one W. Bush, and one Obama appointee), who put a stop – at least in the 6th Circuit – to the whole “bosses controlling your health care” thing…Granted, we know there are courts that are taking the other view (I’m looking at you 10th Circuit en banc decision in Hobby Lobby), but for now the employees and dependents in the 6th Circuit and 3rd Circuit (remember that good Conestoga Wood opinion!) can breathe a sigh of relief that their health care decisions remain their own.