The US Supreme Court recently ruled that Wheaton College need not submit to its health insurer EBSA Form 700. This is the form that tells the insurer (or third party administrators) that, for religious reasons, the College objects to covering abortifacients and insists that those drugs and devices be excluded from the plan–and that also then requires the insurer (or TPA) to turn around and offer to College’s women employees exactly the coverage the College just said it rejected. Instead, the Court said, Wheaton College need only inform the government of its religious objection (which the government already knew via the College’s lawsuit against the mandate). The government can then act to make certain that the insurer or TPA, which are already obligated to provide full access to the contraceptives, without charge to the employees, fulfill their responsibilities.

This is yet another dispute about how and whether the government will protect the religious freedom rights of religious nonprofit organizations. Recall that the government exempts churches from the mandate and had insisted that for-profit businesses were fully subject to it–the US Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case said instead that some for-profit businesses do not have to comply with the mandate. The government treats religious nonprofits as having intermediate religious rights: not exempt but instead, “accommodated.” The form that Wheaton College objects to was part of the accommodation.

Now the government has told a court that it is devising another option for religious nonprofits, something along the lines of what the Court said should happen with Wheaton College: just give notification to the government; then it is the obligation of the government to ensure the full coverage of contraceptives.

Will religious nonprofits consider this to be a better alternative than the current accommodation? Will they insist on a full exemption-asking the government to find some way, wholly distinct from religious employers, to ensure the access to all contraceptives that the government says is a vital interest? Details coming. Stay tuned.