PHILADELPHIA – The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and nearly a dozen leading medical organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al. v. President United States of America, et al., which is currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case is an appeal from a ruling by a Pennsylvania federal district court, which held that “Final Rules” – which undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s contraceptive mandate – are arbitrary and capricious.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged the first Trump administration’s Religious and Moral Exemption Rules, arguing that the rules unlawfully undermined the ACA’s contraceptive coverage requirement by allowing virtually any employer or health insurance issuer to exclude contraception from coverage by invoking religious or moral objections. The case is currently on remand from a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania in 2020.
As nationally-respected physician and reproductive health care organizations, the amici emphasize contraception’s longstanding and robust Food and Drug Administration-approved safety profile, along with its multitude of health and societal benefits, including improving the overall health and well-being for women and their families and reducing maternal mortality.
The medical organizations filing this brief are ACOG, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, American College of Nurse-Midwives, American College of Physicians, American Gynecological & Obstetrical Society, American Society for Reproductive Medicine, American Medical Women’s Association, North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, Society of General Internal Medicine, and the Society of Gynecologic Oncology.
These amici state in their brief: “Women should be able to make personal decisions regarding their reproductive health — decisions that often require sharing intimate details of their sexual history and private family planning — in collaboration with their trusted health care providers. The patient’s employer should not be part of that decision-making process, no matter their particular beliefs.”
“Contraception is safe, effective, and a critical component of women’s preventative health care services. The women of this country need our government’s support in reducing barriers to accessing this essential health care. We should expect no less,” said Molly Meegan, JD, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at ACOG.
“Contraception’s safety and efficacy are beyond dispute, and for generations its health and economic benefits have been widely recognized. In fact, nearly every woman in America has used contraception at some point in their lives. But cost and access has put contraception out of reach for too many, creating sometimes dangerous circumstances,” said Kaitlyn Golden, Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward. “These Trump administration rules force women into a two-tiered system of care – requiring them to either pay out-of-pocket for contraception that the law guarantees should be free, try to seek that care elsewhere, or forgo it altogether. That is cruel, unlawful, and an unacceptable intrusion of employers’ personal beliefs into women’s health care decisions.”
The legal team at Democracy Forward includes Carrie Flaxman and Kaitlyn Golden.
The friend-of-the-court brief is here.
