Four Groups Have Already Said They’ll Sue The Trump Administration Over Its New Birth Control Rules

HHS published the regulations Friday as “interim final rules.” Normally, new rules are released and have a period for comments from the public before they are amended and implemented. But while the new contraception rules do have a public comment period until December 5, they went into effect immediately. And it is unclear what affect the comment period will have, if any.

“Both rules are being pushed through on an emergency basis, and there’s no emergency,” Graves said on the call.

Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, also argued that the new rules could conflict with prior Supreme Court rulings. Amiri specifically cited the Hobby Lobby and Zubuk v. Burwell cases, in which the court decided that religious groups and family businesses with religious beliefs would not have to provide contraception coverage, as long as an accommodation remained in place that ensures that employees had access to contraception under a separate plan.

“The availability of the accommodation is what allowed the Supreme Court to ensure that women received this coverage,” Amiri said. “The Supreme Court has absolutely recognized the necessity of seamless contraception coverage.”

These rules, she argued, violates those decisions.

The two rules, which went into effect immediately after they were published at 11:15 AM on Friday, would greatly broaden the ability of employers, universities, religious institutions, and even health insurers themselves, to opt-out of covering birth control.

Employers could stop providing some or all contraceptive coverage to their employees for moral or religious reasons, without having to alert the government or make the claim of their opposition to anyone besides their employees. They could also opt out of a government accommodation set up by the Obama administration to ensure that religious institutions would not have to cover contraception themselves, but that women would still obtain contraception coverage through separate insurance.

While HHS said the moral or religious opposition to covering contraception has to be “sincerely held, it is unclear how they would determine this.