The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order Tuesday asking for supplemental briefs from lawyers on both sides of the Zubik v. Burwell case to propose how religious nonprofit organizations can avoid providing birth control for employees, but still ensure employee access to those services.
This order was an unusual one and "represented a significant break from the Court's customary approach of taking a controversy as it finds it, and deciding its legality based only on those terms," according to SCOTUSblog.
In the order, lawyers on each side were asked to file one new brief by April 12 — limited to 25 pages in length for the religious nonprofits and 20 pages for the government — and to file single reply briefs limited to 10 pages for both sides by April 20. Within the briefs the lawyers are to suggest how employees of the religious nonprofits can obtain contraceptive coverage through their employer-sponsored insurance in a way that does not require any involvement on the part of the religious nonprofits that would violate their beliefs.
The order gives an example of how this might work and invites the lawyers to "address other proposals along similar lines, avoiding repetition of discussion in prior briefing." The order does not call for another public hearing.
According to SCOTUSblog, the unusual call for supplemental briefs indicates the high court seems to have tentatively accepted the views of both the nonprofit organizations and the government.
"If the lawyers on both sides cannot come up with ways to reconcile those two perceptions, the Court may have to move forward to decide the seven cases just as they came to the Court and as they stood for last week's oral argument," Lyle Denniston wrote for SCOTUSblog.
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