Title: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Headings: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)
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Content: In a five to four decision, the US Supreme Court maintained that the mandate, in cases of privately held, for-profit organizations like Hobby Lobby Inc., violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Although the Court did not decide on the constitutionality of the mandate, their ruling enabled privately held, for-profit corporations that objected to the contraceptive mandate on religious grounds to be exempt from it. On 23 March 2010, US President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, into law. The ACA was a legislative overhaul of the US healthcare system that sought to minimize the number of uninsured US citizens. Many of the ACA’s reforms were directed towards healthcare insurers and mandated which services they were required to cover. The ACA included a provision requiring employer-sponsored health insurance plans to cover certain preventative health services at no cost to the individual. In the provision, the ACA granted the US Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, in Washington, D.C., authority to determine which preventive services health insurance plans must cover. On 15 February 2012, the HHS, the US Department of Labor, and the US Department of Treasury finalized regulations that detailed which preventative health services insurers had to cover. Insurance plans had to cover all contraceptive methods approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. According to the mandate, all employer-sponsored health care plans had to cover fourteen methods of contraception, free of cost to all female enrollees.