On March 13, 2013, a for-profit company filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri under 42 U.S.C. §1983, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ...
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On March 13, 2013, a for-profit company filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri under 42 U.S.C. §1983, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The plaintiff, represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, asked the court for an exception to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance coverage of contraception. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that providing insurance coverage of contraception would violate the religious beliefs of the company's owners.
On April 1, 2013, United States District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig granted the plaintiff's unopposed motion for preliminary injunction and stay of the case. The court ordered the defendant not to enforce the ACA insurance mandate regarding contraception against the plaintiffs until 30 days after the appeal of either of the cases (1)
O'Brien v. U.S. Dep't of Health and Human Services, 894 F.Supp.2d 1149 (E.D. Mo. 2012) or (2)
Annex Medical, Inc. v. Sebelius, No. 12–2804 2013 WL 101927 (D. Minn. Jan. 8, 2013), was decided by the Eighth Circuit, whichever occurred first. Both of these cases involved similar legal issues and the same defendant.
Before a decision was reached in either case, on June 30, 2014, the Supreme Court issued a decision in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751 (2014), a substantially similar case. In a 5-4 opinion by Justice Alito, the Court held that the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA, when applied to closely-held for-profit corporations.
In light of this decision, on November 10, 2014, the parties submitted a Joint Motion for Entry of Injunction and Judgment, in which they jointly agreed that that judgment should be entered in favor of the plaintiffs on their Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim, that a permanent injunction should be entered, that all other claims against the defendants should be dismissed, and that the deadline for any petition by plaintiffs for attorneys' fees should be extended to 60 days after the entry of judgment.
On November 18, 2014, Judge Fliessig signed the consent injunction and judgment, and the case was dismissed. The plaintiffs never moved for attorneys' fees.
Mallory Jones - 11/15/2013
Elizabeth Greiter - 11/02/2017
compress summary
