The Supreme Court’s ruling that employers do not have to provide health insurance that covers birth control had wide-ranging consequences. However, the decision will not have as great an impact on small businesses as previously believed.
The Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby, a craft store founded by Evangelical Christians, challenged the part of the Affordable Care Act that mandated contraception coverage as part of insurance coverage for employees. The Supreme Court agreed that the store can opt of the coverage for religious reasons.
“We doubt that the Congress that enacted [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] — or, for that matter, ACA – would have believed it a tolerable result to put family-run businesses to the choice of violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or making all of their employees lose their existing healthcare plans,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the the majority opinion.
The coverage mandates that contraceptives must be covered for employees of businesses with more than 50 employees. Seventy-eight percent of small businesses are family-owned, but only 2% of small businesses have 50 or more employees.
The decision doesn’t impact small businesses because any business with less than fifty employees is already exempted from the health insurance mandate under Obamacare. Few businesses may not see the point in arguing against the coverage on religious grounds.
“From an economic perspective, [unintended pregnancies are] going to cost me and my insurance provider a lot more than birth control costs,” said Jim Houser, owner of Hawethorne Auto Clinic in Portland, Ore., and executive board member of the Main Street Alliance.
“Businesses have absolutely no business being involved in the personal relationships of any employee — especially with a woman and her doctor, ” added Houser. Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, also argued that the ruling would lead to a slippery slope in her dissenting opinion.
“Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations ?” she wrote.
