Associated Press

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Religion, birth control and President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul are about to collide at the Supreme Court yet again.

Faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals that oppose some or all contraception as immoral are battling the administration over rules that allow them to opt out of covering the contraceptives for women that are among a range of preventive services required to be in health plans at no extra cost.

The religious-oriented nonprofit groups say the accommodation provided by the administration does not go far enough because they remain complicit in providing government-approved contraceptives to women covered by their plans, though the groups are not on the hook financially.

A new federal appeals court ruling is the first to agree with the nonprofits, after seven other appellate panels sided with the administration. Such disagreements among lower courts often are a trigger for consideration by the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court takes up the matter in its term that begins in October, it would be the fourth high-court case stemming from the health care overhaul that Obama signed into law in 2010.

The high court twice has preserved the law, but has allowed some for-profit employers with religious objections to refuse to pay for contraceptives for women.

Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the requirement to offer birth control.

For other religious-affiliated nonprofit groups such as hospitals and schools, the administration argues that the accommodation creates a generous moral and financial buffer between religious objectors and funding birth control. The nonprofit groups just have to raise their hands and say that paying for any or all of the 20 devices and methods approved by government regulators would violate their religious beliefs.

To do so, they must fill out a government document or otherwise notify the government so that their insurers or third-party administrators can take on the responsibility of paying for the birth control. The employer does not have to arrange the coverage or pay for it. Insurers get reimbursed by the government through credits against fees owed under other parts of the health law.

But dozens of colleges, hospitals, charities and other organizations have said in lawsuits they still are being forced to participate in an effort to provide coverage for contraceptives, including some which they claim amount to abortion. The government may impose fines on groups that do not comply.

Mark Rienzi, who has represented some of the nonprofits, said the government is asking the groups to do more than just raise their hands.

“Everyone’s claim is, ‘I can’t do it on the form and in the way that lets you use my plan to give out the stuff. I can’t be involved,”’ Rienzi said. The government has other ways of providing the contraceptives, he said.

Appeals courts in Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have dismissed those claims. But the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis decided otherwise in a case involving several nonprofit groups in Missouri, including CNS International Ministries of Bethel and Heartland Christian College of Newark