A Michigan automotive parts manufacturer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare whether the federal government can force private employers to provide its workers with cost-free insurance coverage for contraception prescriptions.

Autocam Corp., based in Kentwood, Mich., on Tuesday petitioned the Supreme Court to review and overturn previous court rulings denying its request for an exemption to provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requiring employers with 50 or more full-time workers to include contraceptive prescriptions and other women's preventative care services in their group health benefit plans.

Autocam and its owner, Thomas Kennedy, sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Department in October 2012, claiming that the requirement violates their legal rights to administer their employee health care plans according to the Kennedy family's beliefs as Roman Catholics, rights they assert are guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

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

In September, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's request for a preliminary injunction barring federal regulators from forcing it to comply with the mandate, pending the outcome of its lawsuit.

Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Chicago-based Thomas More Society and the Kennedy family's lead attorney in its case against HHS, said in a statement on Tuesday that the health care reform law's contraceptives requirement “makes a mockery of the very notion of religious freedom.”

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“This cannot be tolerated in a society that professes to honor fundamental civil liberties,” Mr. Brejcha said.

Autocam is the second private employer to ask the Supreme Court for a final ruling on the contraceptives requirement, which has been challenged by more than three dozen for-profit family-owned businesses. Late last month, East Earl, Pa.-based Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. filed a petition similar to Autocam's, seeking the high court's review of two lower court rulings denying its challenge of the requirement.

Separately, the Health and Human Services Department has 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.