Posts by Sushila Rao

“Conscience Amendment” defeated in Senate

Posted 80 days ago by Sushila Rao

Voting mostly along party lines, the Senate today voted to defeat the so-called Conscience Amendment, which embodied the Senate Republicans’ response to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s requirement that group health plans must include “[a]ll Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”  The Obama Administration later offered an “accommodation” for religious institutions whereby, in case a religious institution decides to opt-out and declines to provide coverage that includes contraceptive services, the insurance company would have to contact the concerned woman directly and offer her contraceptive coverage free of charge.”  This compromise has been largely rejected as inadequate by conservatives.

Many Senate Republicans have tried to couch their opposition to the policy as premised on the First Amendment right of employers, such as Catholic hospitals, to free exercise of religion, rather than their aversion to a woman’s ability to access birth control.  Proposed by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Conscience Amendment was attached to a highway bill,  and would allow employers to opt out of a new federal health-care mandate for their employees if they have religious objections.  Federal lawsuits have also been filed challenging the constitutionality of the policy on the anvil of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

However, under the controlling Supreme Court precedent, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the First Amendment argument is a non-starter.   Read more