A federal judge on Monday put a nationwide hold on rules set up by US President Donald Trump’s administration that allow more employers to opt out of providing women with no-cost birth control.
US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia agreed with a lawsuit originally filed by Pennsylvania, citing the potential harm to states should the rules be enforced.
Numerous citizens could lose contraceptive coverage, resulting in the increased use of state-funded contraceptive services, as well as increased costs to state services from unintended pregnancies, Beetlestone wrote.
The rules, scheduled to take effect on Monday, would change a mandate under the Affordable Care Act by allowing more employers, including publicly traded companies, to opt out of providing no-cost contraceptive coverage to women by claiming religious objections. Some private employers could also now object on moral grounds.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the court ruling a “victory for the health and economic independence of women” and the rejection of a Trump administration move to violate a US federal law that requires insurers to cover the services.
“[The US] Congress hasn’t changed that law, and the president can’t simply ignore it with an illegal rule,” Shapiro said.
New Jersey later joined Pennsylvania in suing.
In issuing the injunction, Beetlestone wrote in her opinion that the states were likely to win their lawsuit’s claims that the Trump administration violated procedural requirements for how regulations must be created and that the rules exceed the scope of authority under the Affordable Care Act.
The US Department of Justice did not say whether it would appeal, saying only that it would “continue to vigorously defend religious liberty.”
The US Department of Health and Human Services said the rules affirm the administration’s commitment to upholding constitutional freedoms.
“No American should be forced to violate his or her own conscience in order to abide by the laws and regulations governing our healthcare system,” Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in a statement.
A US federal judge in California on Sunday blocked the rules from taking effect in the jurisdictions in the lawsuit before him. Those included California, New York and 11 other states along with Washington, D.C.
At issue is a requirement under former US President Barack Obama’s healthcare law that birth control services be covered at no additional cost.
Obama officials included exemptions for religious organizations, but the Trump administration sought to expand those exemptions and added “moral convictions” as a basis to opt out of providing birth control services.
The US Justice Department has argued that the new rules “protect a narrow class of sincere religious and moral objectors from being forced to facilitate practices that conflict with their beliefs.”
Beetlestone had previously blocked an interim version of the rules in a December 2017 ruling. In November, the Trump administration rolled out a final version of the rule, prompting another challenge by states.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS