Once more with SCOTUS and birth control

Here we go.

In another major case concerning Texas women’s reproductive care, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider if the right to religious freedom is broad enough to completely exempt nonprofits with religious objections to birth control from providing women access to it through their insurance plans.

The case, formally known as Zubik v. Burwell, pits religious nonprofit groups — including East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University — against the federal government over a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring some employers to provide contraceptive coverage to female workers.

The Texas case is among seven related lawsuits the high court agreed to hear together in which religious nonprofits argue the mandate infringes on their religious freedom. The Obama administration says the groups are offered a way around the requirement through a mechanism that still gives women access to free contraception.

Under the federal health care act, employers with 50 or more full-time employees are required to offer health plans with “minimum essential coverage,” including access to federally approved contraception for women, without co-payments or deductibles.

Religious nonprofits can seek “accommodations” to be exempted from the contraceptive mandate by submitting a form or notification certifying the organization’s objection on religious grounds. Doing so transfers the administrative duties of providing contraception coverage from the employer to the insurance company or a third party, which takes over handling the claims.

But the nonprofits argue they should be exempted from the requirement altogether because they are still “being forced to facilitate access” to contraceptives they oppose. In this case, the religious groups object to emergency contraceptives, including the so-called morning-after-pill, and intrauterine devices, which they liken to so-called “abortifacients” — or drugs that induce an abortion. (Health experts and scientists have disputed that claim.)

That parenthetical statement really understates the matter. People are free to believe what they want, but when those beliefs are contradicted by objective reality, I’m not sure why the law needs to accommodate them. Too bad I’m not on the Supreme Court.

Anyway. I’ve been following the HBU/East Texas Baptist lawsuit from the beginning – see here, here, and here for the basics, and remember that the full Fifth Circuit – yes, that Fifth Circuit – refused to uphold the initial lower court ruling in HBU’s favor.

Given the current composition of the Court, the fact that nearly every appeals court rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments, and the way things went with the HB2 case, there was a fair amount of optimism going into this one that the good guys would prevail. Unfortunately, it looks like perhaps the Bad Anthony Kennedy showed up for oral arguments.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the last major case brought by religious objectors to birth control, the Court’s five justice conservative majority effectively wrote the “substantially burden” requirement out of the law. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Court in that case, the Hobby Lobby plaintiffs “sincerely believe that providing the insurance coverage demanded by the HHS regulations lies on the forbidden side of the line, and it is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial.”

It quickly becomes clear during the Zubik argument, however, that the Court’s four justice liberal bloc wants to put the words “substantially burden” back into the law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor notes that, under the conservatives’ truncated reading of RFRA, it is unlikely that a plaintiff would ever fail to show a substantial burden because “we’re not asking you to do anything except identify yourself.” Justice Stephen Breyer even goes so far as to wax philosophic about how much easier life was in the few years before RFRA was enacted.

Kennedy, however, wants no part of this project to make “substantially burden” mean something again. “It seems to me that there is a substantial burden” in this case, Kennedy tells Solicitor General Don Verrilli in an uncharacteristically candid moment. About a minute later, Kennedy is even more candid, disclosing that he believes that this entire case comes down to whether the government could have used a less restrictive alternative (the third prong of RFRA) to provide birth control to women whose employers object to birth control.

For most of Verrilli’s time at the podium, however, Kennedy is sphinx-like, saying little and revealing little about whether he believes the government has made its case. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito spend this period taking shots at Verrilli. At a major argument over abortion earlier this month, the Court’s conservative wing appeared stilted and unsure how to seize the offensive with Scalia absent from the bench. Today, with Scalia’s seat literally absent from the Courtroom and just eight chairs facing the audience and the attorneys, it was clear that Roberts and Alito had their mojo back.

In their briefs, the religious objectors argue that requiring them to fill out a form in order to receive a contraceptive plan is not the “least restrictive means” of ensuring access to birth control. The government could have created a new birth control entitlement program funded by taxpayers (an alternative that Kennedy briefly appears skeptical of), or they could have offered birth control-only plans in the Affordable Care Act’s health care exchanges to women whose employers refuse to provide them with contraceptive coverage.

Alito focuses on the later of these two opinions, in a series of questions for Verrilli that can fairly be described as combative and nasty. At one point, Alito demands to know how the government can claim that Obamacare’s exchanges are “so unworkable” that they cannot provide an alternative for women that need birth control-only plans. It’s the sort of remark that seems more at home on Fox News than in the Supreme Court of the United States, and its delivered in a tone that seems to betray Alito’s bitterness over the fact that he has twice tried and failed to gut Obamacare by judicial decree.

In response, Verrilli argues that offering birth control-only coverage in the exchanges would not be a workable solution. For one thing, it’s not currently legal to sell such single-subject plans in the exchanges. For another, it’s far from clear that any private insurer would agree to offer such a plan. And even if they did, there’s no guarantee that a woman would be able to buy a plan that included the same doctors she relies upon for other medical care. This could lead to a world where a woman’s regular physician would be unable to prescribe contraception or even counsel the woman on many issues related to her reproductive health. And it would add an additional layer of complication that would discourage many women from seeking out contraceptive care.

Roberts, meanwhile, embraces the religious objectors’ argument that the government is “hijacking employers’” health plans via its fill-out-the-form regulation. This proves to be a very effective argument for Roberts, largely because it appears to sway Kennedy near the end of Verrilli’s time at the podium. In response to Verrilli’s attempt to explain some of the details of how the fill-out-the-form rules operate, Kennedy snaps back “that’s why it’s necessary to hijack the plans!”

In contentious cases, Kennedy often appears to play the role of Hamlet, asking questions of both sides and giving off an air of uncertainty about how he will ultimately vote. But when Kennedy shows real emotion in one of his questions, or when he adopts the loaded language of one of the parties, that’s normally a good sign that he’s made up his mind. When the votes are cast and the Court’s decision is released, it’s a good bet that Kennedy will vote against Team Birth Control.

Yeesh. The good news from our perspective in Texas is that a 4-4 split would leave the Fifth Circuit ruling against the plaintiffs in place. That’s a small consolation for anyone in a state governed by the Eighth Circuit, which was the one to buy into that dumb argument, of course. Perhaps some day we can get a ninth Justice confirmed and settle this once and for all. In the meantime, this may be the best we can do. Have I mentioned that this election is super important? A transcript of the oral arguments is here, while TPM, SCOTUSBlog, Kevin Drum, and the Trib have more.

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