On New Year’s Eve, just hours before the healthcare reform (also known as the Affordable Care Act or ACA) contraceptive mandate requirement was supposed to go into effect, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stay and gave the federal government until Friday to respond to the Court.
The stay applies to a limited group of employers. More specifically, it applies to an order of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor and certain other Roman Catholic nonprofit groups that use the same health insurance plan offered by the Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust.
The contraceptive mandate is one of the ACA’s most controversial mandates. Under the law, many health insurance plans must cover certain preventive services for women without cost sharing (e.g., coinsurance, copayments, and deductibles). These preventive services include contraceptive methods and counseling or more specifically, “all Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.” However, there are exceptions to the mandate. For example, the requirement to cover such preventive services doesn’t apply to grandfathered health plans or to certain religious employers.
The contraceptive mandate has been the subject of quite a few lawsuits across the country since the ACA became law. The Supreme Court will take a closer look at it this year when it hears two cases challenging it—Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius. Both the cases concern whether corporations may decline to provide contraceptive coverage to employees based on the religious beliefs of the owners of the corporations.