The Obama administration has announced it will revise regulations concerning religious objections to providing contraceptive coverage that are voiced by nonprofit organizations, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
On July 3, The U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction allowing Wheaton (Ill.) College, a nonprofit Christian college, to stop providing contraception to its employees under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and to bypass filing a form with its insurer asserting its religious objections to doing so.
A nonprofit religious organization with religious objections to covering contraceptive services is exempt from the contraceptive mandate of the PPACA as long as they list their objections in "EBSA Form 700." After the form is completed, the religious organization's health insurance company arranges for contraceptive services to be provided to the organization's female employees free of charge.
Wheaton College filed an application for an emergency injunction, which contended completing the form and sending it to its health insurer makes the college "complicit in grave moral evil," because the college would be authorizing the insurer to pay for the contraceptives.
The Supreme Court's majority said Wheaton College did not have to fill out EBSA Form 700. As a result, the college's employees will not have the option of receiving free contraceptives from the college's insurer.
The injunction issued in the Wheaton College case was not a final Supreme Court determination. However, this week, attorneys from the Justice Department said new regulations will be issued in the next month that will apply to all nonprofit institutions that provide religious objections to providing contraception, according to the Journal.
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