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NWLC Reacts to Supreme Court’s Devastating Decision on Birth Control
(Washington, D.C.) Though the legal fight could continue in lower courts, the Supreme Court today approved of the Trump-Pence Administration’s rules regarding birth control coverage. The rules allow virtually any employer or university to exempt itself from the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement that insurance plans must cover contraception without out-of-pocket costs.
NWLC calculated that 61.4 million women currently have insurance coverage of birth control without out-of-pocket costs due to the ACA. The Supreme Court’s decision will leave their ability to receive this critical coverage at the whim of their employers and universities. This decision will disproportionately harm low-wage workers, people of color, LGBTQ people, and others who already face barriers to care.
In April, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, National Women’s Law Center, and SisterLove, Inc. and 50 additional organizations filed an amicus brief in the case.
The following is a statement by Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC):
“The Court is turning its back on people who need birth control and setting a dangerous precedent by allowing the Trump-Pence Administration to use religion as an excuse to discriminate. The Administration’s rules show the extreme, cruel lengths it will go to restrict access to reproductive care, and now the Court has endorsed them. It’s unconscionable that we’re still fighting at the Supreme Court for basic access to birth control – even during a pandemic and economic crisis. But the decision also left the door open for lower courts to invalidate the illegal Trump rules once and for all. We won’t stop until everyone can get birth control coverage once and for all, no matter where they work or go to school.”
