California v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (U.S.C.A. 9th Circuit, 2019)

At stake in this case are the administration’s final rules on religious and moral objections to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) contraceptive mandate. The federal court issued a nationwide injunction blocking the new rules, which would effectively repeal the contraceptive mandate and broadly allow employers and universities to invoke religion or morality to block their employees’ and students’ contraceptive coverage that is otherwise guaranteed by the ACA. On appeal, ADL joined ACLU and other national civil rights organization on an amicus brief, which recounts how the use of religion in America to justify racial and sex discrimination has abated as societal views and norms evolved. The brief argues that religion in the form of the excessively broad exemption in this case should not be used as a vehicle to further sex discrimination in our society.