Affordable Care Act Case Analysis

612 Words2 Pages

Historical Background and Issues On the 30th of June of 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that “the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows for-profit companies to deny contraception coverage to employees based on a religious objection”. Essentially, this ruling only applies to the contraceptive mandate in question, rather than to all possible objections of the Affordable Care Act. So, in layman’s terms the Supreme Court’s ruling is that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is to be read as applying to corporations [since they are composed of individuals who use them to achieve desired ends]. Before this case was taken to the Supreme Court, the Greens [representing Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.] decided to sue Kathleen Sebelius [the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services]. This case presented …show more content…

However, within these cases there were possessors of for-profit corporations, that had sincere Christian beliefs that life began at conception [and that it would be a violation of their beliefs to allow for access to contraceptive drugs]. It should be mentioned that :
…the Greens, their children and their companies – Hobby Lobby Stores and Mardel – were also denied a preliminary injunction, but the Tenth Circuit reversed. It held that the Greens’ businesses are ‘persons’ under [the] RFRA, and that the corporations had established a likelihood of success on their RFRA claim because the contraceptive mandate substantially burdened their exercise of religion and HHS had not demonstrated a compelling interest in enforcing the mandate against them…
With this reasoning, the Greens were able to gain the favor of most of the Supreme Court Justices.
Factual Background of the

Open Document