Yale law clinic helping suit in federal birth control changes

NEW HAVEN — A Yale Law School clinic has joined a suit against the Trump administration on changes it issued on insurance coverage for contraception.

The Reproductive Rights and Justice Project will act in a research capacity to support the suit brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights earlier in the month.

The Trump administration issued two interim rules on Oct. 6 that greatly expands the number of organizations that can seek an accommodation from providing contraceptive coverage at no cost to their employees.

The suit claims the changes, which negate rules worked out after more than 200,000 people had weighed in over several years, went into effect without any public comment — a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act,

It also claims the new rules violate the Equal Protection Clause because it shifts the burden to employees and students who are the intended beneficiaries of this portion of the Affordable Care Act and violates the First Amendment by promoting a particular religious outlook.

There is concern that cutting off free contraceptives to the hundreds of thousands of women who now receive them will increase the number of unwanted pregnancies.

“This latest act of hypocrisy by the so-called ‘pro-life’ Administration will impede the efforts of women to avoid unwanted pregnancies and likely reverse the decrease in abortions that resulted from the ACA’s mandate to make the most effective contraceptives available to women at no cost,” said Priscilla Smith, a clinical lecturer at the Yale clinic, on its website.

She is one of the attorneys involved in the suit against the administration.

The purpose of the clinic is to give students “firsthand experience” in these kinds of suits and “strategic advocacy in a highly contested area of law,” covering both procedural issues and substantive questions of law.

Messages were left with several students seeking comment.

The New York Times reported that more than 55 million women don’t pay out-of-pocket costs for birth control coverage because their health insurance covers it, according to a study ordered by the Obama administration.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in reaction to criticism after the rules were issued said:

“The president believes that the freedom to practice one’s faith is a fundamental right in this country . . . This is a president who supports the First Amendment, supports the freedom of religion — I don’t understand why that should be an issue,” according to the Washington Post.

Under the original rules that were part of the ACA, accommodations were created for religious employers, such as churches, that objected to paying for contraceptives for their workers.

Under that exemption, the religious groups did not have to pay for the contraceptives, but employees who wanted them were still able to get them without charge. After the Supreme Court in 2014 took up the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores case, the exemption was extended to closely held for-profit companies.

The new Moral Exemption Rule and the Religious Exemptions Rule extend the exemptions to almost any business, including publicly-held corporations, nonprofits and universities that object on religious or moral grounds to contraception.

Beyond that, the rules make the accommodation optional for these objectors. It also allows them to provide insurance plans without this coverage.

“Together, these changes will prevent thousands of women from obtaining the no cost contraceptive coverage to which they would otherwise be entitled. As a result of the sweeping exemption created by the Rules, many women may be left with no choice but to purchase a health insurance plan that excludes coverage for a service that is critical to their health and well-being,” the suit states.

The suit claims the new rules frustrate the goal of increasing access to preventive care and puts the federal government in the position of “choosing to privilege certain religious and moral ideologies, and in so doing, imposes significant harms on women.”

Quoting the Guttmacher Institute, the suit said the average woman in the United States will have two children. This means she will spend “close to three years pregnant, post-partum, or trying to conceive, and about three decades trying to avoid unintended pregnancy.”

To be equal partners in the workforce and educational worlds, the suit said women have to have control over their reproductive lives.