Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was hospitalized with a gallstone infection, participated in the remote arguments from her hospital bed.
are the latest dispute to reach the courts over the regulation of reproductive healthcare. It directly pertains to a requirement instated under the Affordable Care Act requiring all employers to provide employees with insurance coverage for contraception. Wednesday wasthis specific requirement has come before the Supreme Court, but the first since Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both appointed by President Donald Trump, joined the bench.
On Tuesday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment of a gallbladder condition. According to the Supreme Court press office, she was treated without surgery, and her condition was a “benign” infection. Chief Justice John Roberts — who often sides with the more conservative justices on the court, but after Justice Anthony Kennedy’s departure is now considered the court’s swing vote — seemed to align his questions with those of Justice Stephen Breyer, who is normally a member of the court’s liberal bloc.
The ACA’s mandatory birth control coverage now has a long, complex legal history, spanning several court cases. Under Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services, churches and other houses of worship were already exempted from being required to apply abortion coverage, and following several court cases, additional “accommodations” were made to provide workarounds for religious organizations that did not want to directly provide contraception coverage.
Both Justices Roberts and Breyer told the attorneys on either side of the argument Wednesday that they didn’t fully understand what the problem was. They both cited the Supreme Court case they decided in 2016,, religious organizations argued that the contraceptive mandate violated their religious freedoms. Roberts and Breyer told the attorneys Wednesday that they didn’t understand why they couldn’t work out an agreement then, and they still don’t understand it.
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