Hours before Obamacare went into effect, Sonia Sotomayor was called on by the Justice Department to stop blocking the Obamacare requirement that religion-affiliated organizations need to provide free birth control, the Associated Press reported.
Under the Affordable Care Act, most of the health insurance plans are required to offer free of charge contraceptives that have been FDA-approved for women, according to the AP.
The law also states churches and other religious houses of worship can be exempt from providing contraceptives, but any affiliated university, hospital or charitable organization is not exempt, the AP reported.
In order for churches to be exempt from that part of the health care law, a form must be signed stating the religious group objects to the coverage and the insurer can then move on, the AP reported.
Nuns who run a nursing home for the poor in Denver called the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged are arguing if they sign the forms they are still committing a wrongdoing in providing birth control which is a violation of their religious beliefs, according to the AP.
"Unfortunately, the federal government has started the new year the same way that it ended the old one: trying to bully nuns into violating their religious beliefs," the nuns attorney Mark Rienzi said, according to the AP.
According to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli not only do the nuns not have to provide birth control through the exemption, there is also nothing in the law which forces the nuns to have to pay for birth control for their employees because the nuns insurance is tied to church plan which is not required to provide contraceptives.
"With the stroke of their own pen, applicants can secure for themselves the relief they seek from this Court - an exemption from the requirements of the contraceptive-coverage provision - and the employer-applicants' employees (and their family members) will not receive contraceptive coverage through the plan's third-party administrator either. The application should be denied," Verrilli stated, according to the AP.
