By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday struck down rules adopted during President Donald Trump's first term that exempt employers with religious or moral objections from having to provide workers with insurance coverage for birth control.
U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia said the 2018 rules were not justified, rejecting the Trump administration's claims that they were necessary to protect the rights of religious employers.
The ruling came in a lawsuit by Pennsylvania
and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2020 upheld the rules on technical grounds but did not address their merits.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns that intervened in the case to defend the rules, will appeal the ruling, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that represents the order.
The federal Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception but allows those with religious objections to seek exemptions.
The 2018 rules created a blanket exemption for employers with religious or moral objections to contraception. The Trump administration said that even requiring employers to apply for an exemption could burden their religious practice, in violation of federal law.
But Beetlestone on Wednesday said there was a mismatch between the vast scope of the exemption and the relatively small number of employers who may need it.
That "casts doubt on whether ... there is a rational connection between the problem the Agencies identified and the solution they had chosen," wrote Beetlestone, an appointee of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
The administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had proposed withdrawing the Trump administration rules in 2023 but that proposal was withdrawn weeks before Biden left office in January.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
