Administration offers new tweak to birth control rule - The Washington Post

So just how asinine are the objections to the ACA becoming,,,

First we had Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius who claimed that being required to fill out a short form violates their religious liberty. The court ruled, "[t]o meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, applicants need not use the form prescribed by the Government and need not send copies to third-party administrators."

Next was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling which not only dismantled United States v. Lee (1982) - an employer cannot impose their religious beliefs on their employees - but added confusion by stating,

In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage,,, Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections. We therefore conclude that this system constitutes an alternative that achieves all of the Government's aims,,,

In short, fill out a form, you know the one they told the Little Sister they didn't have to use. Yea, OK, that will work,,,for 5 days.

The kicker in all this, Wheaton College v. Burwell where the Court once again reversed course and granted a temporary exemption from the requirement that they fill out the form. [As an aside: Wheaton basically argued, as did the Little Sisters, that filling out the form itself is a violation of their religious liberty. But as some have pointed out Wheaton objects to the "work-around" itself as their health plan would still be required to provide contraceptive coverage and it doesn't want that to happen even though it doesn't have to pay for it.]

That brings us to where we stand today,,,

The new federal guidelines address a set of ongoing legal challenges to the contraceptive requirement raised by dozens of religious nonprofit groups, such as hospitals and charities, that could again put the contraception mandate before the Supreme Court. The religious nonprofits are challenging the administration's already existing opt-out, in which the groups can ask a third party to provide the contraception coverage to their employees. However, the nonprofits say that filling out the form notifying the third party violates their religious beliefs.

The nonprofits can now directly inform the Department of Health and Human Services of their religious objections. HHS and the Labor Department will then coordinate contraception coverage with insurers and third party administrators. The nonprofits still have the option to notify a third party directly.

Which boils down to this, Hobby Lobby is appeased as is Wheaton College.  BUT,,,

Several of the country’s biggest faith groups on Friday said the revised rule was still problematic because it didn’t fully exempt organizations – for-profit or non-profit – with religious objections.

"Here we go again,” said Russell Moore, president of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. “What we see here is another revised attempt to settle issues of religious conscience with accounting maneuvers. This new policy doesn't get at the primary problem.”-

Now the religionist want to move the goalpost yet again by claiming that they cannot take ANY action that will set in motion a chain of events that leads to someone receiving contraception, as doing so would make them complicit in the act of providing birth control.

Sorry to say but this debacle is no longer about the ACA or the birth control mandate. It goes much deeper and many fail to see where this is leading:

If you can be exempt from an insurance law that is supposed to bring medical care to everyone, why not just ask to be exempt (as some of these groups have) from pay equity statutes, from civil rights laws (effecting lesbian and gay Americans)? There is no stopping this once you go down this slope of exemptions based on religious claims for FOR PROFIT COMPANIES.

Administration offers new tweak to birth control rule - The Washington Post