'Profoundly unfair': Supreme Court upholds Trump administration's religious exemptions to Obamacare birth control mandate

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down another decision on the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare—this time, expanding exemptions to the ACA’s birth control mandate for employers who object to it on religious grounds.

National Public Radio reports, “The U.S. Supreme Court has made it more difficult for women to get access to birth control as part of their health plans if their employer has a religious or moral objections to contraceptives. The opinion upheld a Trump Administration rule that significantly cut back on the Affordable Care Act requirement that insurers provide free birth control coverage as part of almost all health care plans.”

One of the dissenters in the 7-2 ruling was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote, “That simplistic approach has no basis in law and strips thousands of schoolteachers of their legal protections.”

Sotomayor condemned the decision for its “inherent injustice” and asserted, “This sweeping result is profoundly unfair. The Court is not only wrong on the facts, but its error also risks upending antidiscrimination protections for many employees of religious entities.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, however, expressed a very different view, saying, “We hold today that the Departments had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption. We further hold that the rules promulgating these exemptions are free from procedural defect.”