Supreme Court, Affordable Care Act, and "Hobby Lobby" owners

Forecast Posting at SCOTUS blog (www.scotusblog.com): With profit-making businesses waiting to learn within days whether the Supreme Court will spare them, for religious reasons, from having to provide birth-control care for their female workers, several R0man Catholic non-profit entities on Friday (June 27) asked the Court for similar legal protection. The new applications went separately to Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, but they probably will share the pleas with their colleagues — as happened in a similar situation in January. The Court is expected to finish its current Term on Monday (June 30, 2014), and one of the two decisions still outstanding involves the new federal Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employee health plans include pregnancy preventive services. That controversy involves two profit-making companies whose religiously devout owners object to that obligation. It is now nearly a certainty that a second round in this health care dispute, involving non-profits, will reach the Court in the new Term that opens in October 2014. Already, Justice Elena Kagan has given the University of Notre Dame additional time to file an appeal in a case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Midwestern Federal Court). Appeals also were promised in both of the applications filed Friday. The charities in those cases face Tuesday (July 1) deadlines to take action to obey the mandate.