However, even under the Trump administration the Department of Justice had not stopped its appeals of the HHS mandate cases. On May 4, however, President Donald Trump announced that, as part of his religious freedom executive order, the objecting religious non-profits would receive relief from the mandate.
He told the non-profits and the nuns present from the Little Sisters of the Poor that "your long ordeal will soon be over" and that "we are ending the attacks on your religious freedom."
HHS Secretary Tom Price said the agency "will be taking action in short order to follow the President's instruction to safeguard the deeply held religious beliefs of Americans who provide health insurance to their employees."
A draft interim final rule from the HHS was leaked in May, which reportedly carved out religious exemptions from the mandate for the objecting non-profits that were more broad than the narrow exemptions determined by the Obama administration, which applied to churches and very few other religious groups.
Becket, a religious freedom law firm defending many of the objectors to the HHS mandate, said the language in the draft would offer sufficient protections from the mandate for the religious groups.
In the draft, the government also admitted in the draft that the contraceptive mandate did not advance a compelling governmental interest, which is one of the necessary qualifications for a law that infringes upon someone's sincere religious beliefs to succeed the test, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
However, the administration's rule has not yet been released. The Catholic Benefits Association finally filed a motion in court asking the government to drop its appeal of the HHS mandate case, and citing the government's admission in the draft rule that the mandate did not further a "compelling governmental interest."
The court gave the government a July 31 deadline to reply to the motion. On Monday, the Department of Justice replied that the administration was still in the process of crafting the final rule for religious non-profits and the contraceptive mandate, and asked the court to suspend the motion until the process was finished.
"As we explained in our status report of July 14, 2017, the new Administration has initiated the rulemaking process to amend the regulations at issue here," the agency said on Monday. "That process has not, however, reached conclusion. This Court has properly maintained abeyances in related cases while the rulemaking process proceeds, and it should do the same here."
In response, Wilson said that "the Tenth Circuit made clear that it wanted the government's response to address 'with specificity' the arguments in our motion, which of course they have not done to date."
The agency had initially requested from CBA an extension to reply to the motion, which CBA would have opposed, Wilson said. However, later on Monday, the agency instead filed a short brief in response to the motion.
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"We're disappointed in that all of the facts come to our side of the equation, they favor our argument," Wilson said. He said that "we're very heartened that the response that they filed is in our opinion lacking in substance, and we feel hopeful that the court's going to see it the same way."
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.