This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 4th, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

The health insurance mandates in Obamacare, those covering contraception, abortion, and related services, are losing in court.

Ilia Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, comments.

We talked previously about the sort of the collective conscience that we're compelled

to participate in with respect to contraceptive funding,

with respect within the confines of Obamacare.

What do we know now?

Well, there have been a few developments both on the litigation field

and in terms of regulations. In the last couple of weeks courts have been busy issuing

decisions against the Obama administration.

I think the total record now is something like 11 and 3 against the contraceptive mandate

at various procedural stages. And I don't want to bore people with the technical intercept of against the beliefs of individuals relating to, whether it be abortion, contraceptives,

other various parts of Obamacare, the courts aren't looking kindly to this.

Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, the Obama administration

last week promulgated a new regulation giving greater exemptions to still non-profit entities.

It's not clear whether it's just the non-worship activities of churches, so you know, churches

operating soup kitchens and hospitals and things like that or non-profits more broadly but what

it is clear is that for-profit businesses like Hobby Lobby that we discussed before

of a bunch of organizations a bunch of businesses filing suit around the country they will not be examined. of less important. As the Obama administration attempted to draw out any sort of meaningful differentiation

between firms that are for-profit and firms that are non-profit or firms that are non-profit

religious with respect to religious liberty?

Yeah, they definitely have.

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