Federal Court Blocks Religious Exemption for Obamacare Birth Control Mandate

A federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration’s religious and moral exceptions to the Obamacare birth control mandate from being implemented in five states.

On Thursday, a split three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction by the district court. Judges John Clifford Wallace, a Richard Nixon nominee, and Susan Graber, an appointee of Bill Clinton, upheld the district court’s ruling.

The decision allows the states of California, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and New York to ignore the Trump administration’s rules that protect employers with religious or moral objections to abortion-inducing drugs and birth control from being forced to provide them to workers.

In the majority opinion, Wallace wrote that women who are denied free birth control through employer health insurance plans will end up costing states more money.

“The declarations submitted by the states further show that women losing coverage from their employers will turn to state-based programs or programs reimbursed by the state,” he wrote, though he added that the record did not support affirming the district court’s ruling on a nationwide basis.

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