Court Birth Control Ruling Opens Door to More Challenges
Closely held companies may deny some health benefits for their employees after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. can refuse to cover certain contraceptives for its workers.
More lawsuits may follow, as companies whose shares aren’t publicly traded use the court’s 5-4 decision to challenge federal requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or other laws, such as the Civil Rights Act. Publicly traded companies, which have diverse shareholders and can’t plausibly claim to adopt the personal views of their owners, aren’t affected, the court said.
The Supreme Court’s decision isn’t consistent with a long-standing principle that corporations are separate entities from their owners, said Aaron Katz, a partner at Ropes & Gray in Boston. For workers at closely held companies, the ruling may mean that some health benefits besides contraception would be covered at the whim of their bosses, said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health policy at George Washington University, although the justices said that isn’t their intent.
“There’s nothing about contraceptives other than personal opinion, personal moral belief, that distinguishes them from other guaranteed health benefits around which people may have personal moral beliefs,” Rosenbaum said in a phone interview before the decision.
“Why couldn’t a company’s owner say they’re morally opposed to treating patients with HIV? Morally opposed to blood transfusions? To immunizations?” she said.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-30/court-birth-control-ruling-opens-door-to-more-challenges.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
