Written by Don Byrd
This morning’s Supreme Court release of opinions came and went without a ruling in the much-anticipated Hobby Lobby case. It should come either tomorrow or Monday. The opinion will resolve the dispute over whether the government can require a closely-held, for-profit corporation to provide contraception coverage that violates its owner(s) religious beliefs.
As The Hill blog notes, however, there is still more to come in the religious liberty dispute over contraception mandates in the ACA.
Just as Hobby Lobby headlined a group of for-profit businesses challenging the contraception mandate, the Little Sisters of the Poor headline a much larger group of non-profit ministries challenging the same mandate. The non-profit cases are about a year behind the for-profit cases in court. But after Hobby Lobby—win or lose—the Supreme Court will have to decide the fate of the Little Sisters and other non-profits.
The Hobby Lobby decision should provide some guidance on the scope of religious liberty protection afforded by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (See the BJC’s fantastic new RFRA resource page here). But it will not likely address the concerns of Little Sisters of the Poor, which you can read more about here.
