Supreme Court News: Women Blast Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College Decisions
Following this week's U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College cases, the three female justices issued a strongly worded statement that blasted the rulings and warned of the impact they could cause.
On Monday, the justices' 5-4 vote narrowly ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby's appeal that, based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners, it should not have to provide certain contraception coverage to employees as mandated in the Affordable Care Act.
Then Wheaton College, a Chicago-area evangelical college, won a temporary ruling from the Supreme Court, which stated that, for the time being, the school did not have to pay the mandatory fine for refusing to provide coverage or sign the release form allowing employees to seek coverage from a third party, CNN reported.
The dissent from Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote it, stated that the Wheaton injunction threatened the Hobby Lobby decision's credibility.
"Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word," Sotomayor wrote. "Not so today."
She added that the point of the dissent was that, "It is not the business of this court to ensnare itself in the government's ministerial handling of its affairs in the manner it does here."
CNN reported that until the lower courts make a decision on the matter, Wheaton College has a pass from complying with the Affordable Care Act's mandate, a compromise between President Barack Obama's administration and religious-based nonprofits that oppose birth control.
The mandate allows the nonprofits, such as some hospitals and faith-based universities, to work with a third party to ensure its employees get proper health care coverage, including contraception without a co-pay.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't enforce the contraception mandate. It also stated that any entity that objects could notify the government "in writing that it is a nonprofit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services," instead of signing the government form, according to CNN.
Sotomayor fired back in the justices' dissent by essentially asking what the point of the third-party form serves then.
"The court's actions in this case create unnecessary costs and layers of bureaucracy, and they ignore a simple truth: The government must be allowed to handle the basic tasks of public administration in a manner that comports with common sense," Sotomayor wrote. "The court's grant of an injunction in this case allows Wheaton's beliefs about the effects of its actions to trump the democratic interest in allowing the government to enforce the law."
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