Ruth Bader Ginsburg blasts Trump’s solicitor general during Supreme Court hearing ‘while still in her hospital bed’ – The Sun

SUPREME Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg blasted the Trump administration on Wednesday for a rule that lets businesses to opt out of providing free birth control for women.

The 87-year-old slammed Solicitor General Noel Francisco for allowing the government to "toss to the wind" an essential service.

Ginsburg made the pointed remarks from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for a gallbladder infection.

"What the government has done in expanding this exemption is toss to the wind entirely Congress' instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost comprehensive coverage," she said during a telephone hearing live-streamed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"They can get contraception coverage by paying out of their own pocket which is exactly what Congress did not want to happen."

Ginsburg noted that a "major trend in religious freedom is to give everything to one side and nothing to the other side."

She then referenced Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. where a majority of the court found in 2014 that private corporations could be exempt from the Obama-era birth control mandate based on religious objections.

"Nothing in the interim rules affects the ability of employees and students to obtain without costs the full range of FDA-approved contraceptives," she said.

"You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential. That is that women be provided these services with no hassle, no cost to them."

She added: "Instead, you are shifting the cost of the employer's religious beliefs to the employees who do not share those religious beliefs."

"The women end up getting nothing. They are required to do just what Congress didn't want."

Francisco pushed back on Ginsburg's comments, claiming that the Affordable Care Act doesn't require contraceptive coverage.

He argued that churches couldn't be exempt from the contraception rule unless it was also available for for-profit businesses.

The justice disagreed, saying that churches have traditionally enjoyed said exemption from the beginning.

"The church has enjoyed traditionally an exception from the first case," she said.

"The church itself is different from these organizations that employ a lot of people who do not share the employer's faith."

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