Federal regulators and a Pennsylvania-based woodworking company have separately asked the Supreme Court of the United States to determine whether private, for-profit employers can be compelled to provide employees with cost-free coverage for contraceptive prescriptions.

Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., owned and operated by a Mennonite family in East Earl, Pa., on Thursday entered its petition for a hearing before the Supreme Court in hopes of overturning a series of lower court rulings rejecting its challenge of the federal health care reform law's contraceptive coverage requirement.

Also on Thursday, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department petitioned the high court to reverse a decision rendered in June by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in which the court granted Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. a temporary exemption from the coverage requirement pending the outcome of the company's lawsuit against the department.

Conestoga Wood Specialties and Hobby Lobby are among the three dozen for-profit, family-owned businesses separately seeking to block the federal government from forcing employers with 50 or more employees to provide cost-free coverage for contraceptive prescriptions and other women's preventative care services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The requirement, which is included in the reform law's minimum coverage standards for employer-sponsored health care plans, went into effect in August 2012.

The companies suing for exemptions to the requirement claim that it violates their legal rights to administer their employee health care plans according to their respective religious beliefs, which in most cases forbid them to use or provide access to contraceptive prescriptions.

%%BREAK%%

To date, 29 companies seeking to block enforcement of the requirement have been granted preliminary injunctions pending the outcome of their lawsuits, while five employers have been denied any injunctive relief. No federal district or appeals court has yet reached a final decision on the legal merits of any of the lawsuits, including the two cases submitted Thursday to the Supreme Court.