I just wanted to point out that, in addition to the blow to religious liberty, there are some serious problems with the decision when it comes to gender politics:

By denying prescription contraceptive drugs, Respondent is discriminating based on gender because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women.

One might say that this is part of a gender-discrimination case: To discriminate by gender, a policy must affect one gender more than the other.

But it’s the whole case the EEOC came up with. There isn’t any argument whatsoever that the gender discrepancy was the reason for, as opposed to a side effect of, the decision. And as Dave points out, they don’t even try to discredit the school’s (rather convincing) alternative explanation based on standard Catholic teachings.

Also, under this absurd logic, any change whatsoever in the coverage of single-gender medications constitutes discrimination. When you cover Viagra, you’re increasing the number of medications available to men, but not to women. When you de–cover Viagra, you’re decreasing the number of medications available to men, but not to women.

Further, anyone with a wife or girlfriend on birth control might not agree that “men are not affected” when women must pay for contraception out-of-pocket.

Finally, though it strays from the topic of this post, I couldn’t resist quoting this sentence:

The benefits were not changed based on each individual employee’s religious beliefs; contraception benefits were removed from the health plan for all employees.

Now, I haven’t been Catholic for about a decade, but isn’t the overall idea here that Catholic institutions shouldn’t have to pay to support practices they abhor, like oral contraception and abortion? Not that Catholic institutions should enforce all their employees’ religious beliefs, whatever they may be?