Seyfarth Synopsis: To promote healthier lifestyles in an effort to ultimately reduce the cost of health care in the United States, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires private health plans to provide first dollar coverage for evidence-based preventive care. As a result, such things as immunizations and cancer screenings must be covered without the requirement to pay a co-pay or meet a deductible. A recent decision by a federal district court in Texas allows employer plan sponsors to exclude coverage for certain preventive treatments to which they objected.
One of the results of this ACA preventive care requirement was to empower the Federal Government to deem certain medical treatments as being effective preventive care and thus necessary for coverage by group health plans. In Braidwood Management Inc v Becerra, 4:20-cv-00283 (N.D. TX), a Court found that an employer who objected to a certain preventive treatment on religious grounds could be exempted from offering that otherwise mandated treatment.
Specifically, in this matter the Court held that the professed Christin beliefs of a for-profit employer exempted it from providing PrEP, a medication that lowers the risk of HIV transmission by over 99%, despite coverage of PrEP being mandated as an effective preventive treatment under the Affordable Care Act. In reaching this holding, the Court noted that the employer objected to covering PrEP as:
[H]e believes that (1) the Bible is "the authoritative and inerrant word of God," (2) the "Bible condemns sexual activity outside marriage between one man and one woman, including homosexual conduct," (3) providing coverage of PrEP drugs "facilitates and encourages homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman," and (4) providing coverage of PrEP drugs in Braidwood's self-insured plan would make him complicit in those behaviors.
The Government argued that the employer put forth no evidence that PrEP increased any of the activities to which it objected. The Court found that argument irrelevant, since the employer believed that PrEP had this impact. The Court also acknowledged that despite this religious objection, the Government had a compelling interest in mandating that benefit plans offer PrEP. However, the Court nevertheless found this compelling interest insufficient to trump the employer's religious beliefs because the government did not prove how exempting religious for-profit employers from the mandate would impact the compelling interest of slowing/stopping HIV transmission. The Court further noted that the Government could simply solve the issue by paying for PrEP for individuals covered by a health program that did not cover PrEP.
This ruling is significant in that it shows the increasing tension in jurisprudence between public health of employees and society-at-large on the one hand and the religious rights of private employers on the other. Importantly, this line of case law could also raise tension under Title VII as Courts thread the permissibility of an employer's religious belief to oppose homosexual behavior and its legal mandate not to discriminate against homosexual employees.
The impact of this ruling is not limited to PrEP. Rather, this ruling provides fertile ammunition for employers to argue that their religious beliefs justify their exemption from a whole host of otherwise required medical treatments, including birth control and Plan-B. Stay tuned as we continue to track legislation and court rulings that impact access to health care coverage.
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