The USCCB says the change is a "return to common sense, long-standing federal practice, and peaceful coexistence between church and state."

The change provides "a broad religious and moral exemption from the mandate requiring employers to fund health insurance cover for sterilisation, contraception, and drugs and devices that may cause abortions."

Besides those already exempt from the birth control mandate, the change will exempt any nonprofit groups that have a religious or moral objection to contraception coverage. For-profit groups that are not publicly traded will also be able to be exempt for religious reasons. Insurance companies with a religious affiliation are also exempt from the birth control mandate.

The change in the policy took effect last Friday.

Among the reasons offered for the change in policy are Trump's promises in relation to issues on religious freedom and 50 lawsuits filed by groups challenging the Obamacare coverage requirement.

"No American should be forced to violate his or her own conscience in order to abide by the laws and regulations governing our healthcare system," Caitlin Oakley, HHS press secretary, said.

The USCCB issued a statement after the change in the mandate was announced.

"The Administration's decision to provide a broad religious and moral exemption to the HHS mandate recognizes that the full range of faith-based and mission-driven organisations, as well as the people who run them, have deeply held religious and moral beliefs that the law must respect. Such an exemption is no innovation, but instead a return to common sense, long-standing federal practice, and peaceful coexistence between church and state. It corrects an anomalous failure by federal regulators that should never have occurred and should never be repeated.

"These regulations are good news for the Little Sisters of the Poor and others who are challenging the HHS mandate in court. We urge the government to take the next logical step and promptly resolve the litigation that the Supreme Court has urged the parties to settle.

"The regulations are also good news for all Americans. A government mandate that coerces people to make an impossible choice between obeying their consciences and obeying the call to serve the poor is harmful, not only to Catholics, but to the common good as well.

"Religious freedom is a fundamental right for all, so when it is threatened for some, it is threatened for all.

"We welcome the news that this particular threat to religious freedom has been lifted and, with the encouragement of Pope Francis, we will remain 'vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.'"

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that two businesses have protection on religious grounds against a Government mandate requiring coverage of contraceptive services in employee health plans.

The contraception mandate is included in law as part of Obamacare.

The Supreme Court cited the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which aims at preventing legislation that infringes on a person's free exercise of religion.

The Supreme Court's five conservative Catholic justices outvoted their four liberal counterparts.

All three women justices on the Supreme Court voted with the minority.

The decision only applies to "closely held" corporations, such as Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, which were plaintiffs in the case.

Such companies have 50 per cent of their shares owned by five or fewer individuals.

Around 90 per cent of all American businesses qualify as closely-held corporations.

The Supreme Court ruling also insisted that its decision only applied to the issue of contraception.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the Government could find another way for funding contraceptive services for employees in closely held corporations.

But in a dissenting opinion, Judge Ruth Ginsburg said it would cause "havoc" and invite Christian businesses to mount a flurry of challenges to other laws on religious grounds.

The healthcare mandate provides some exemptions for non-profit groups.

But many such groups, including several Catholic dioceses and institutions, claim they do not do go far enough.

At least three dozen cases are still pending across the US challenging the application of the mandate.

The President of the US Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, said the Supreme Court did not decide whether the extent of exemptions for non-profit groups also violates the RFRA.

But he praised the Supreme Court ruling as recognising "that Americans continue to follow their faith when they run a family business".

Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts chain which has 25,000 employees, is run by a Christian family, but it only objects to contraceptives that are abortifacient.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter (decision)
• National Catholic Reporter (bishop reaction)
• The Telegraph
• Image: ABC News

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops declined to comment on the Obama administration's latest modification to the Health and Human Services mandate that many Catholic employers are challenging in court.

But other organisations defending plaintiffs in some of the 44 current legal challenges to the HHS mandate said the modifications would not help most of their clients.

Significantly, the Catholic Health Association, which a year ago expressed initial support for the Obama mandate, offered no endorsement of the administration's latest proposal.

Under the latest proposal, Catholic dioceses will probably be exempted from coverage by the HHS mandate. Catholic hospitals, social agencies and universities will not — though the administration proposed other ways to provide the required benefits without any direct financial or administrative involvement by objecting religious non-profits organisations.

The government's plan is to allow Catholic hospitals and universities to offer employee health plans that do not directly provide free contraception and other "preventive services" for women.

Employees or insured students who wanted contraceptive coverage would be able to arrange it through outside insurance companies, at no cost to themselves and without financial or even administrative support of the faith-based institution.

For-profit companies and non-profits that do not have an explicitly religious mission, such as pro-life organisations, could not avail themselves of this stand-alone policy.

Yuval Levin, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said in a National Review Online post that that new proposal "betrays a complete lack of understanding of both religious liberty and religious conscience.

"Religious liberty is an older and more profound kind of liberty than we are used to thinking about in our politics now. It's not freedom from constraint, but recognition of a constraint higher than even the law.... It's not the right to do what you want; it is the right to do what you must."

National Catholic Register

Catholic News Service

National Review Online

Image: Salon