The Supreme Court called the Obama administration's bluff

Years of litigation over the Obamacare mandate for coverage of early abortion pills, birth control and sterilization, culminated in seven cases under the title Zubik v. Burwell. All that time, religious organizations like Christian colleges and nuns told the courts that the government could achieve its goals another way, without forcing them to violate their faith.

The government already provides birth control to low income women through a dozen statutes including Medicaid and Title X. Obamacare's insurance exchanges now offer plans covering these same items to people whose employers may have stopped offering health insurance.

Meanwhile, the government allows some major corporations not to comply with the birth control mandate at all, leaving millions of women without it, and the government gives those women no assistance. And after changing its rules multiple times, the government fully exempted church-related organizations and some schools from this mandate.

So why wouldn't the government extend that exemption to devout religious groups like my client Geneva College? Why are they deemed less religious than a church, and why must they amend their health plan contracts to make sure the coverage flows?

The Supreme Court seemed to have similar questions. After oral argument in March, it took the extraordinary step of asking the government and the religious groups to submit new briefs asking whether the government could in fact achieve its goal of delivering birth control coverage to religious groups' employees without making the group take any additional steps beyond telling their insurer they don't want the coverage.