Birth Control Refusal

Last Thursday, July 11, a district court in Michigan refused to temporarily stop enforcement of the contraceptive coverage benefit against another for-profit corporation. The company challenging the contraceptive coverage benefit is Mersino Management. Mersino Management sells water bypass systems for profit. Indeed, it states that “complete water management is our specialty.” The bosses at Mersino Management also think that they have a special right to decide whether their employees get access to birth control. Specifically, Mersino Management has been arguing in court that for-profit companies can exercise religious beliefs and that bosses’ should be able to impose those religious beliefs on their employees to determine whether employees are able to have birth control coverage.   Read more »

While the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage benefit makes birth control and quality reproductive health care more accessible and affordable for women than ever before,helping women to avoid unintended pregnancies and better care for themselves and their children, opponents have not given up on their attempts to roll back that progress. These include the U.S. House of Representatives’ 37 ineffective attempts to repeal the federal health care law, and state legislation that attacks the birth control coverage guarantee.

And then there are the lawsuits. The lawsuits just keep coming — many from for-profit companies. The cases are challenging the requirement under the health care law that all new insurance plans provide birth control coverage, without cost-sharing.

A new case was filed last week by a West Virginia-based corporation engaged in selling and servicing motor vehicles. While Holland Chevrolet’s 150 full-time employees receive employer based group health insurance, the company has always denied female employees and dependents access to the full range of birth control.  Read more »

Women in manufacturing continue to lose out. As we’ve said before, women aren’t seeing any of the gains from the recovery in the manufacturing sector. While the nation has gained over half a million manufacturing jobs since 2010, women have lost 36,000. In March alone, women lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs.

But these aren’t the only kinds of losses hitting women in the manufacturing industry; even women who have managed to hold onto their jobs might find themselves stripped of some benefits if employers like John Kennedy, CEO of Autocam, have their way.

The man at the helm of Autocam Corporation, a Michigan-based for-profit company that manufactures auto parts and medical equipment, is arguing he should have the right to deny employees and dependents all forms of contraception. The district court did not agree. It denied his request for a preliminary injunction, stating that, “Implementing the challenged mandate will keep the locus of decision-making in exactly the same place: namely, with each employee, and not the Autocam plaintiffs.

The Wisconsin Assembly is considering a bill that would undermine women’s ability to control their reproductive health. AB 216  targets both access to abortion AND access to contraception—a move that a member of the Committee on Health reviewing the bill described as “ironic.” I would add ‘poorly informed, contrary to reason, and designed to undermine women’s ability to control their health care decisions.’

If passed, the bill would weaken women’s reproductive health in two ways:

1. It would ban insurance coverage of abortion for state employees.
2. It would allow certain kinds of bosses to take away women’s access to insurance coverage of birth control.

What do a crafts supply chain, construction contractor, and health food company have in common? Over the past two weeks these for-profit companies have tried to convince appellate courts that their employees should be denied full insurance coverage of birth control at their bosses' discretion. Today, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation — a wood cabinet manufacturer with 950 employees — becomes the fourth for-profit company to try to convince a circuit court in oral arguments for preliminary injunction that they should not have to comply with the federal birth control benefit. 

Both the district court and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals have rejected Conestoga's attempts to get out of complying with the birth control benefit by arguing that a for-profit company's religious beliefs should overrule the government's interest in protecting women and children's health. However the company hasn't heeded the courts' warning that they're unlikely to win.  Read more »

Yesterday, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case of Hobby Lobby's challenge to the Affordable Care Act's birth control benefit. The case was heard by all the active judges on the 10th Circuit, as opposed to a typical panel of three. At the heart of this case is whether Hobby Lobby, a for-profit company, can be required to cover contraception for its over 13,000 employees. Hobby Lobby's owners contend that some forms of contraception, including the "morning-after-pill," are in violation of their religious beliefs, because they may cause abortions. This is medically inaccurate.

The main focus for the judges was whether Hobby Lobby, as a for-profit corporation, has a constitutionally protected right to religious freedom. Chief Judge Briscoe asked the lawyer for Hobby Lobby, "Do you have any authority that a for-profit corporation can exercise religion? How does that work?" Perhaps the Chief Judge was skeptical after the District Court held that "[g]eneral business corporations do not, separate and apart from the actions or belief systems of their individual owners or employees, exercise religion. They do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously-motivated actions separate and apart from the intention and direction of their individual actors. Religious exercise is, by its nature, one of those 'purely personal' matters…which is not the province of a general business corporation."

Nonetheless, relying on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA"), Hobby Lobby's attorney sought to establish that the birth control benefit would impose a substantial burden on the corporation and its owners. Read more »

Today, Hobby Lobby will try to explain to all the judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals why employees of a craft store chain should be denied full insurance coverage of birth control at their bosses' discretion. Hobby Lobby is the largest of the 31 for-profit companies attempting to challenge the federal birth control benefit, with over 13,000 employees who will be affected by what the judges decide. 

This is Hobby Lobby's fourth try at getting a court to accept its argument that the religious beliefs of a for-profit company should overrule women's health and that it should not have to cover some forms of birth control. The district court that first denied Hobby Lobby's request to get out of providing the full birth control benefit said that any burden on its owners' religious beliefs was too "indirect and attenuated" to meet the legal standard: 

"[T]he particular burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [the corporate] plan, subsidize someone else's participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiff[s'] religion." 

The 10th Circuit said "We agree" when it denied Hobby Lobby's request to temporarily get out of providing the benefit. Read more »

Score one for sanity! Last Thursday, the Missouri Attorney General announced that he will not appeal a federal court ruling that struck down a Missouri law that would have required insurance issuers to issue polices without contraceptive coverage to employers who claim that birth control violates their “moral, ethical or religious beliefs.”

The law directly conflicted with the federal health care law’s contraceptive coverage requirement, which requires all new health insurance plans to cover contraceptives with no co-pay. In his announcement, the Attorney General aptly stated, “the attempt to deny contraceptive coverage to women in Missouri is just plain foolishness” and “cannot be supported by case law or sound policy.” Read more »

Earlier this month, we told you about a bill introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives that would let bosses use their religion to discriminate against female employees and make decisions about their reproductive health care. Unfortunately, the House passed H.B. 108 last week, and it is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate today at 11:30 a.m. Read more »

Alabama politicians will be voting on whether to allow your boss to make your reproductive health care decisions. H.B. 108 was introduced just last week and voted out of committee yesterday without a public hearing. It’s moving to the House floor for a vote as early as today. Alabama politicians want to allow bosses to use their religion to discriminate against the 637,666 Alabama women who get health insurance through their job or their spouse’s job.

(For a flavor of the kinds of bosses who claim their religious beliefs should dictate what medical care someone can receive, check out Jezebel’s recent examination of the businesses in the 18 for-profit cases against the federal contraceptive coverage benefit.)

Read more »