By Lyle Denniston
SCOTUSblog
If you’d like to discuss health care law, contact David Weissman, director of the Rose Law Group Employment Law and Managed Health Care Law Practice, dweissman@roselawgroup.com
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor refused on Wednesday afternoon to block enforcement of the new federal health care law’s mandate that profit-making companies begin providing free birth-control drugs and methods for their women workers, beginning next week. In a four-page opinion, Sotomayor ruled that an Oklahoma City family and its religion-oriented businesses did not qualify for a court order against the mandate while its court challenge goes forward.
This marked the first time that the Supreme Court has been drawn into a nationwide controversy over the contraceptives mandate. More than forty lawsuits have been filed against that requirement by non-profit religious schools, colleges, and hospitals, and by religion-oriented, profit-making companies. Justice Sotomayor, noting that the lower courts that have ruled so far on pleas for emergency court orders have reached mixed results, concluded that the Hobby Lobby family’s right to an injunction could not meet the rigorous standard that it be “indisputably clear.”
