During today’s press briefing at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said that the Obama White House will “respect” the Supreme Court’s decision on the Hobby Lobby case, despite disagreeing with it. Earnest also spelled out why the Obama administration disagrees, saying: “We believe the owners of for-profit companies should not be allowed to assert their personal religious views to deny their employees federally mandated benefits.”
The “federally mandated benefits” were not written into the Obamacare law, which was opposed by the majority of Americans when Democrats passed it and remains unpopular now. The Department of Health and Human Services wrote the mandate into regulations and has refused to budge ever since. The Supreme Court found that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed with an overwhelming congressional majority and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
Earnest would not specify which options the Obama administration is assessing after the 5-4 defeat, one of a string of defeats that the Obama administration has met at the Supreme Court recently.
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