Court: New health law doesn’t burden religious nonprofits

The federal health care law doesn’t burden faith-based nonprofit organizations that object to covering birth control in their employee health plans.

That’s according to a decision issued Tuesday by a federal appeals court in Denver.

A group of Colorado nuns and four Christian colleges in Oklahoma sued over the federal health care law. They are already exempt from covering contraceptives because of an exemption in the law.

But the religious groups argued that the exemption doesn’t go far enough because they must sign away the coverage to another party, making them feel complicit in providing the contraceptives.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The judges wrote that the law with the exemption does not burden their exercise of religion.