Companies Not Required to Pay for Employee Contraception, Obama’s Ire

Even corporations have a religion. That is how the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court could be summarized: “Family-owned” commercial enterprises are not obligated to pay for their employees’ contraception coverage, as set out by the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s health care reform. This is a defeat for the White House, which was depending on the reform’s contraception coverage to gain political influence. However, the defeat is probably even more poignant for American women and nonreligious citizens, who awaited with worry the outcome of the ruling for a long time.

In a majority decision, the nine judges, five Republican judges in favor and four Democratic judges against, ruled that a commercial enterprise owners’ religious faith is in itself sufficient reason to deny coverage. According to the opinion of the majority of the judges, the law cannot discriminate “against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs.” In other words, religion allows an individual, as well as a commercial enterprise to contest the federal law. Furthermore, there was also a Republican majority decision in the much discussed 2010 Citizens United ruling, which acknowledged that commercial enterprises and labor unions had the same right to free expression as individuals, paving the way for these same commercial enterprises to support their politics affiliations through unlimited funding.

Concerning the ruling on contraception coverage, the dissenting judges tried to point out “the intolerable consequences” that this decision could have on American society. For the first time in its history, the court extended the right of religious freedom to the “the commercial, profit-making world.” Then, there is the question of who exactly may be the subject of objection on the part of a commercial enterprise. Today, it is commercial enterprises owned by Christians that object against contraception coverage. In the future, other corporations, perhaps owned by people of different faiths, could object against other medical procedures or other matters, such as “vaccinations and blood transfusions, or according women equal pay for substantially similar work.” Lastly, there is the issue of the size of the commercial enterprise that asks to be exempted from paying contraception coverage. Today, only “family-owned” commercial enterprises have the right to exemption. In the future, even the managers of a large corporation could be allowed to object to paying contraception coverage based on their religious beliefs.

“Today’s decision jeopardizes the health of women,” announced Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary. The humiliating political defeat the ruling brought about greatly disappointed Barack Obama’s political circle. The administration had already granted an exemption to churches and other religious institutions from paying for their employees’ contraception coverage. This measure did not satisfy the more conservative Catholic and Christian commercial enterprises, as was shown when Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a manufacturer of wooden furniture, decided to sue the federal government. Conestoga Wood Specialties justified its request not to pay for employee contraceptive coverage by arguing that it wished to “operate in a professional environment founded upon the highest ethical, moral and Christian principles.”

The liberal wing of American politics and the American feminist movement see the court’s siding with Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties as a ruling that further restricts American women’s freedom of choice—not to mention the ever increasing limitations set by many states concerning abortion rights. According to the Guttmacher Institute, an organization focused on reproductive health research, the court’s ruling will have very serious consequences: Many low-income women will no longer be able to access effective contraception methods, and this will “lead to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and abortions.”*

*Editor’s note: Correctly translated, this quote could not be verified.