The following is from a Los Angeles Times editorial:
A federal appeals court has thrown enforcement of one of the Affordable Care Act's mandates into confusion by accepting a bizarre argument: that businesses can refuse on religious grounds to include birth control in employee health plans.
The health-care reform law mandates that if employers provide insurance plans, they must include preventive services, including those specifically for women.
But recognizing that some churches have theological objections to contraception, the administration exempted churches and other purely religious employers. It also proposed a compromise in which religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals may avoid paying directly for contraception.
There is no exemption, however, for businesses whose owners happen to have religious scruples about birth control — nor should there be. Nevertheless, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver concluded in June that the contraceptive mandate couldn't be imposed on two businesses whose owners object to the mandate: Hobby Lobby, a chain of hobby and craft stores that operates on "biblical principles," and Mardel, a chain of Christian bookstores.
The judges suggested that requiring the companies to comply would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Last week, the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to review the 10th Circuit's decision, noting that two other appeals courts had concluded that profit-making businesses could not claim an exemption from the mandate.
The court should take the administration's advice. A hobby shop is not a church, and a religious exception broad enough to cover profit-making businesses will end up swallowing the rule that employer plans must protect women's health.