Pennsylvania v. Trump

Contraceptive access is a cornerstone of reproductive freedom. When employers are allowed to impose their beliefs on workers’ healthcare, it creates barriers to care and deepens inequality. The Lawyering Project joined an amicus brief alongside religious and civil-rights organizations in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania & State of New Jersey v. Trump, urging the Third Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision invalidating sweeping federal rules that allow employers and universities to deny contraceptive coverage based on religious or moral objections. National Women’s Law Center and Americans United for Separation of Church and State represented Lawyering Project and the other 62 amici. 

The challenged regulations dramatically expand exemptions from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage requirement, permitting entities to opt out without notice or meaningful oversight. These rules threaten to strip tens of thousands of people of seamless access to birth control, undermining health, economic security, and gender equality. 

Amici collectively argue that the federal government exceeded its authority by creating blanket exemptions that are neither required by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) nor consistent with basic principles of administrative law. The brief explains that RFRA requires individualized, case-by-case assessments and not unchecked, categorical carve-outs. It also explains that the agencies acted arbitrarily by failing to account for the real-world harms these rules impose on people who rely on employer-sponsored insurance for contraception.  

Amici emphasize that access to contraception is essential to health, autonomy, and equality, and that allowing employers to deny this coverage shifts costs onto individuals and states while disproportionately harming people with low incomes, young people, people with disabilities, and communities of color.