Title: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. | law case | Britannica
Headings: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
law case
Background
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Content: the case names were changed to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Burwell, respectively, following the confirmation of Sylvia Burwell as secretary of health and human services in June 2014. The former case arose in 2012 when David and Barbara Green, their children, and the for-profit corporations they owned— Hobby Lobby, Inc. (an arts-and-crafts retailer) and Mardel Christian & Education Stores, Inc. (a chain of Christian bookstores)—filed suit in U.S. district court, naming Kathleen Sebelius, then secretary of health and human services, and others as defendants. The individual plaintiffs (the Greens) alleged that the imminent enforcement of a regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010; PPACA) would infringe their rights under the RFRA, which prohibited the government from “substantially burden [ing] a person’s exercise of religion” unless “application of the burden…is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means of furthering that…interest.” The Greens also contended that the regulation would violate the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]”). Eventually known as the contraceptive mandate, the regulation required companies with 50 or more employees to provide insurance coverage of the 20 contraceptive methods then approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Despite scientific consensus to the contrary, the Greens believed that four of those methods—two types of “morning after” pills and two types of intrauterine devices (IUDs)—were abortifacients ( abortion inducers). On that basis they also believed that providing coverage of those methods in their employees’ health insurance plans would be tantamount to facilitating abortion and therefore inconsistent with the tenets of their Christian faith. They argued that, because HHS imposed considerable penalties (regulatory taxes of $100 per day per affected employee) on companies whose health insurance plans failed to provide “basic essential coverage,” including contraceptive coverage, the contraceptive mandate constituted a “substantial burden” on their exercise of religion—a violation of both the RFRA and the free-exercise clause. The district court denied the Greens’ motion for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the mandate, as did a two-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.