Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s broad birth control mandate exemptions

The Trump administration’s religious and moral carve-outs to an ObamaCare requirement that all employer health plans cover contraception at no cost were blocked on Wednesday by a federal judge. 

District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia issued a summary judgment that the rules were arbitrary, capricious and an overreach of the authority of the agencies that wrote them in 2017.

Under the rules, essentially any for-profit or nonprofit employer or insurer was allowed to exempt themselves from following the birth control mandate on moral and religious grounds. The rules also let publicly traded companies obtain a religious exemption, but not a moral one...