In a pair of last-minute decisions issued Sunday and Monday, two federal courts blocked the Trump administration’s rollback of the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate.
Two federal judges just blocked Trump’s rollback of Obamacare’s birth control mandate
Last-minute rulings halt the new rules from taking effect nationwide.
Dylan Scott covers health for Vox, guiding readers through the emerging opportunities and challenges in improving our health. He has reported on health policy for more than 10 years, writing for Governing magazine, Talking Points Memo, and STAT before joining Vox in 2017.
The new regulations were supposed to take effect on Monday, but the two court rulings will halt their implementation for the time being.
The Trump regulations would give large private companies and religious nonprofits alike the ability to opt out of the ACA’s requirement that health plans cover most birth control methods at no cost to the patient. Companies, even Fortune 500 firms, could cite any moral or religious objection to justify dropping contraception coverage.
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US District Judge Haywood Gilliam on Sunday first placed a temporary injunction on the new rules from the administration in order to allow a legal challenge from 13 states to go forward. The ruling was limited to those states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Washington, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The injunction was then extended to the rest of the country in an order issued by Judge Wendy Bettlestone on Monday in a separate case brought by Pennsylvania and New Jersey to stop the regulations.
The court rulings do not permanently block the new Trump rules, but rather prevent them from going into effect while the lawsuits are ongoing.
The Trump administration issued regulations rolling back the mandate late last year, and they’ve been in the works since the beginning of the Trump presidency. As Vox previously explained:
The regulations significantly broaden the types of companies and organizations that can request an exemption from that rule. This could lead to many American women who currently receive no-cost contraception having to pay out of pocket for their medication.
The new rules allow large, publicly traded companies to seek an exemption from the birth control requirement if they have a religious or moral objection to providing such coverage. The Obama administration barred these large businesses from such exemptions.
The rulings are yet another legal loss for President Donald Trump, whose administration has aggressively sought to roll back ACA provisions through regulations after the failure of repeal in Congress. The courts also blocked a previous attempt to loosen the birth control mandate, ruling that the administration had rushed the regulations through the rulemaking process.
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