Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-431_5i36.pdf
Page Number: 54.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

5 

KAGAN, J., concurring in judgment 

“sincere  religious  objections.”  82  Fed.  Reg.  47799  (2017).
Given that fact, the Departments might have chosen to ex-
empt the Little Sisters and other still-objecting groups from
the  mandate.  But  the  Departments  went  further  still. 
Their  rule  exempted  all  employers  with  objections  to  the 
mandate,  even  if  the  accommodation  met  their  religious 
needs.  In other words, the Departments exempted employ-
ers  who  had  no  religious  objection  to  the  status  quo  (be-
cause they did not share the Little Sisters’ views about com-
plicity).  The rule thus went beyond what the Departments’ 
justification supported—raising doubts about whether the 
solution  lacks  a  “rational  connection”  to  the  problem  de-
scribed.  State Farm, 463 U. S., at 43.3 

And the rule’s overbreadth causes serious harm, by the
Departments’ own lights.  In issuing the rule, the Depart-
ments chose to retain the contraceptive mandate itself.  See 
83 Fed. Reg. 57537.  Rather than dispute HRSA’s prior find-
ing that the mandate is “necessary for women’s health and 
well-being,”  the  Departments  left  that  determination  in
place.  HRSA,  Women’s  Preventive  Services  Guidelines 
(Dec. 2019), www.hrsa.gov/womens-guidelines-2019; see 83
Fed. Reg. 57537.  The Departments thus committed them-
selves to minimizing the impact on contraceptive coverage, 
—————— 

3 At oral argument, the Solicitor General argued that the rule’s overin-
clusion is harmless because the accommodation remains available to all 
employers  who  qualify  for  the  exemption.    See  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  20–23. 
But in their final rule, the Departments  themselves acknowledged the 
prospect that some employers without a religious objection to the accom-
modation would switch to the exemption.  See 83 Fed. Reg. 57576–57577 
(“Of  course,  some  of  the[ ]  religious”  institutions  that  “do  not  conscien-
tiously oppose participating” in the accommodation “may opt for the ex-
panded  exemption[,]  but  others  might  not”);  id.,  at  57561  (“[I]t  is  not 
clear to the Departments” how many of the religious employers who had 
used  the  accommodation  without  objection  “will  choose  to  use  the  ex-
panded exemption instead”).  And the Solicitor General, when pressed at 
argument, could offer no evidence that, since the rule took effect, employ-
ers  without  the  Little  Sisters’  complicity  beliefs  had  declined  to  avail
themselves of the new exemption.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 22.