Judge blocks Biden-era rule mandating abortion insurance for religious nonprofits

(LifeSiteNews) – Religious entities will no longer be forced to pay for abortions in their employee insurance plans, Missouri District Court Judge Roseann Ketchmark ruled in a case concerning the Biden administration’s interpretation of the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA).

Passed in 2022, the PWFA requires employers make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant employees. Last fall, the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) proposed a rule that would define “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” in the PWFA as encompassing “having or choosing not to have an abortion.”

As explained at the time by Republican U.S. Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Mary Miller of Illinois, the PWFA does not include abortion in its text, and in fact the lawmakers who enacted it said they did so with the express understanding that it did not confer any requirement to facilitate, assist, or accommodate a decision to abort. Some warned two years earlier that the PWFA could be used to infringe on pro-life employers’ conscience rights, yet it passed with the support of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Last year, several states plus the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sued to block enforcement of the new rule against employers who object to complicity in abortion, including the USCCB, the Catholic Benefits Association, and the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, a religious educational nonprofit. They secured a temporary injunction.

On Tuesday, Ketchmark ruled that the Herzog Foundation was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the mandate conflicted with the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and therefore did not have to comply with the abortion aspects of the rule, HR Dive reported.

The EEOC had asked Ketchmark in February to stay a decision until the Trump administration could establish a quorum to reconsider the rule itself, but the judge decided the Foundation’s standing and likelihood of injury were sufficient to take action.

The EEOC has already reversed a number of Biden-era actions, but HR Dive noted that the PWFA case “demonstrates that until EEOC has a quorum and can properly rescind previous agency actions, it must continue to contend with legal fallout pertaining to guidance with which agency leadership does not agree.”

Uncompromising, multi-front support for abortion-on-demand was one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities in office. He used his State of the Union addresses to vow to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again” if the fall elections re-elect him and give him enough votes in Congress to codify a nationwide “right” to abortion, and his administration touted a “whole-of-government effort to protect reproductive rights” (a popular euphemism for legal abortion on demand), including increased taxpayer funding for abortion at home and abroad, attempted to waive federal safety rules against distributing abortion pills by mail, and tried to use the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to force emergency room doctors to perform abortions under certain circumstances.

By contrast, within weeks of returning to office, President Donald Trump reinstated the Hyde Amendment (which forbids most federal funds from directly supporting elective abortions) and the Mexico City Policy (which forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for elective abortions abroad).