Remember how Hobby Lobby got the courts to allow them exemption from providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds? Yesterday, the Obama administration made a request to the U.S. Supreme Court: make a decision regarding contraception coverage under Obamacare.
Reuters reports Obama specifically wants the Hobby Lobby decision made in Denver reversed.
“It’s no different from a company paying an employee’s salary and [an employee] making decisions about how to spend that money on their own. The employee might do something with that salary that might disagree with the employer’s views,” Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said to Politico.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The administration argues exemptions should be reserved for religious employers, not private companies–that covering contraception is necessary to public health promotion. According to Politico, there have already been two requests to rule on this topic, but the third is the first from the Department of Justice. This weighty ask will likely result in SCOTUS picking up the case when it re-adjourns in October.
For more on how the courts have handled contraceptive decisions around the ACA of late, click here.
