ObamaCare Contraceptive Mandate Blocked By Appeals Court

by JASmius

Does this really even matter?  Or, put another way, do you remember when the federal judiciary actually had weight to throw around?:

A requirement of President Barack Obama’s health-care law that group insurance plans cover contraceptives was ordered blocked by a federal appeals court, the first ban on enforcement of the mandate.

Friday’s decision increases the probability that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue to resolve conflicting appeals court rulings.

And we all, of course, know what steadfast guardians of the Constitution the Roberts SCOTUS are on this topic, now don't we?

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago returned two cases to trial courts with instructions to enter preliminary injunctions blocking enforcement of the requirement in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel reversed the lower-court decisions in lawsuits brought by Catholic families and their closely held corporations.

“These cases -- two among many currently pending in courts around the country -- raise important questions about whether business owners and their closely held corporations may assert a religious objection to the contraception mandate and whether forcing them to provide this coverage substantially burdens their religious-exercise rights,” U.S. Circuit Judge Diane Sykes wrote in the majority opinion.

Last month, an appeals court panel in Washington also ruled that the contraceptives mandate may violate religious freedom, as did an appeals court in Denver previously. Appeals courts in Philadelphia and Cincinnati have upheld the law. [emphasis added]

Which is precisely why any Tea Party celebrations should be scotched.  It's precisely why these appeals will go to Olympus, where we can count on Chief Justice Roberts and/or Justice Kennedy to conjure up some cockamamie reason to uphold the contraceptive/abortifacient mandate in its entirety.

And if the allegedly constitutionalist majority should strike it down on a 5-4 vote, well....remember what Andrew Jackson once said to Justice Roger Taney: "He has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it."  I doubt that O will start ordering mass hangings - drone-launched hellfire missiles are far more his style - but as he considers himself completely above the law, I am open to suggestions on how anybody could possibly make such a ruling stick.