WASHINGTON — Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Obama administration from forcing some religious-affiliated groups to provide health insurance coverage of birth control or face penalties as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Acting at the request of an order of nuns in Colorado, Justice Sotomayor issued the stay just hours before the requirement was to go into effect on New Year's Day. She gave the Obama administration until Friday to respond to the Supreme Court.
Justice Sotomayor's order applies to the nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other Roman Catholic nonprofit groups that use the same health plan, known as the Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust. The groups' lawsuit is one of many challenging the federal requirement for contraceptive coverage, but a decision on the merits of that case by the full Supreme Court could have broader implications.
"We are delighted with the ruling," said Mark L. Rienzi, a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who represented the nuns in the lawsuit. "We are delighted that the Supreme Court will require the government to file briefs in the court on this matter." The Little Sisters of the Poor operate nursing homes for low-income people in the United States and around the world.
Without Justice Sotomayor's order, the nuns "would have been forced to comply with the contraceptive mandate on Wednesday or face large fines," Mr. Rienzi said late Tuesday.
The contraception requirement has been one of the most controversial aspects of the health law since the Obama administration first announced it in mid-2011, along with other requirements it characterized as preventive care. Religious opponents of abortion have objected especially strongly to the requirement to provide emergency contraception pills, like Plan B, although most studies show that the drug works by preventing fertilization, not by inducing abortion.
In an effort to compromise, the administration said that women who work for nonprofit religious groups that object to birth control could receive separate coverage not paid for by the employers. It refused, however, to offer accommodations to secular businesses whose owners have religious objections to contraception.
That has led to a separate group of lawsuits. And last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a pair of cases on whether corporations may refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraception.
Justice Sotomayor — who later was to lead the countdown for the Times Square ball drop — issued her order after the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, earlier on New Year's Eve denied the nuns' request for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the new health care law.
The Obama administration had argued that the Little Sisters of the Poor could opt out of the contraceptive coverage requirement by completing "a self-certification form" and providing it to the entity that administers their health benefits. Therefore, the Justice Department said, the contraceptive mandate imposes "no substantial burden on their exercise of religion."
"To opt out of providing contraceptive coverage, Little Sisters need only certify that they are nonprofit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and that, because of religious objections, they are opposed to providing coverage for some or all contraceptive services," the Justice Department told the appeals court on Monday.
The administration says it has exempted churches from the contraceptive coverage requirement and offered an accommodation to certain religious nonprofit groups. But the Becket Fund argued that "the 'accommodation' still forces the Little Sisters to find an insurer who will cover sterilization, contraceptive and abortion-inducing drugs and devices."
"The Sisters would also be required to sign a form that triggers the start of that coverage," it said. "In good conscience, they cannot do that. So the 'accommodation' still violates their religious beliefs."
The Obama administration has repeatedly defended the birth control requirement. "The president believes that no one, including the government or for-profit corporations, should be able to dictate those decisions to women," Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said last month.
One of the pending Supreme Court cases was filed by Hobby Lobby, a corporation owned by a family whose members have said they try to run the business on Christian principles. The company, which operates a chain of arts-and-crafts stores and has more than 15,000 full-time employees of many faiths. Hobby Lobby has said it has no problem with offering coverage for many forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery. But drugs and devices that can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb are another matter, and make it complicit in a form of abortion, the company said.
The other case was filed by the Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, which makes wood cabinets and is owned by a Mennonite family that had similar objections to the law.
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