�鶹Ů��

The Supreme Court will return on Wednesday to the question of whether a regulation requiring many employers to provide free contraception coverage for their workers under the Affordable Care Act violates a federal law protecting religious freedom. In 2014, Justice Antonin Scalia was part of a 5-to-4 majority that voted to limit the mandate, and his death last month raises the possibility of a tie vote in the new case that would leave in place conflicting appeals court decisions and a national legal patchwork. (Liptak, 3/23)

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a case about access to contraception and religious liberty, Zubik v. Burwell, No. 14-1418. Here is a look at the parties and issues in the case. (Liptak, 3/23)

Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law. The administration pointed to research showing that the high cost of some methods of contraception discourages women from using them. Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the birth control requirement. Other faith-affiliated groups that oppose some or all contraception have to tell the government or their insurers that they object. The groups say doing so leaves them complicit because the government is using their insurers and health plans to provide the contraception. (3/23)

The effect that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia's death is having on the Supreme Court's most divisive issues will get another big test when the court convenes Wednesday in the battle pitting religious freedom and birth control. (Williams, 3/23)

Two years ago, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy played down the impact of the decision he had just joined in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell that relieved religiously objecting owners of certain businesses from providing contraceptive coverage to their employees. ... The solution Kennedy suggested — an accommodation that would insulate employers from providing the contraceptive coverage but still ensure that their employees receive it — will be at the heart of the discussion Wednesday when the Supreme Court undertakes its fourth consideration of what is popularly called Obamacare. (Barnes, 3/22)

As in the Hobby Lobby case, the justices are expected to focus on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars U.S. laws that “substantially burden” religious expression unless they further a “compelling governmental interest” that can’t be achieved through less-restrictive means. This time, the justices will directly examine the system devised by the Obama administration after the 2014 case. That workaround aims to retain coverage for individuals while meeting religious objections of nonprofit employers such as the Catholic charities overseen by the bishop and for-profit employers such as Hobby Lobby. ... Most lower courts considering the workaround system have sided with the government. ​The court’s likely swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy,​suggested in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case that the workaround could reconcile the competing interests of religious objectors and public-health policy. (Radnofsky, 3/23)

“We do not question the sincerity or importance of petitioners’ religious beliefs. But as seven courts of appeals have held, their legal claim stretches RFRA too far,” the Obama administration wrote in its brief to the high court. This is the second Texas case concerning women's health the high court has taken up this term. It is also weighing the constitutionality of Texas' 2013 abortion restrictions. (Ura, 3/23)

As she makes her nursing home rounds, as she has for 28 years, Sister Constance Veit gently grasps frail hands, steers wheelchairs with no-nonsense grace and doles out cheery compliments to those in her care. But the moment the nun gets behind the closed door of a conference room, her demeanor hardens. This is a sister at war. On Wednesday, Veit will be just a few miles from the Little Sisters of the Poor facility where she works in Northeast Washington — and a world away. She will be seated in her habit in the U.S. Supreme Court, a striking representative of the religious organizations fighting the White House health care law because of its requirement that employers cover contraception. (Zauzmer, 3/23)