(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A federal judge in Texas sided with a group of Christian employers in the state who fought the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to offer insurance plans covering HIV-preventing drugs, otherwise known as PrEP, as a violation of their religious freedom.
The group argued that covering services for HIV “violates their religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman,” according to Just the News.
Federal district court Judge Reed O’Connor, who presided over the case, agreed with this claim.
The ruling was predictably met with swift opposition from liberal healthcare nonprofit Protect Our Care, which raised concerns about the precedent for other “guaranteed” services through ObamaCare.
The group claims the ruling “invalidated all of the benefits covered under the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, including lifesaving colorectal and other cancer screenings, depression screenings, hypertension screenings and access to PrEP.””
Protect Our Care accused O’Connor of trying to “eliminate all of the guaranteed preventive services under the ACA.”
It is not clear whether O’Connor’s ruling affects just the winning group, all Texans or all Americans under the program. It is also unclear if ACA requirements will stop, or be allowed to continue while that is decided.
The Texas Christian group is hoping to offer health insurance that “excludes or limits coverage of PrEP drugs, contraception, the HPV vaccine and the screenings and behavioral counseling for STDs and drug use.”
Judge O’Connor also said that upon further examination, the Affordable Care Act’s broad-strokes preventative services mandates members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which is the group that decides what must be covered, are “unconstitutionally appointed.”
O’Connor, who is a Bush appointee, has requested that all additional briefs from both parties be on his desk by the end of the week.
