Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is challenging a portion of the federal health care law that requires Catholic institutions to include birth control in their employee health insurance coverage.
Bruning sent a letter to state attorney generals across the country on Tuesday asking them to join a lawsuit fighting the rule.
His office is coordinating the effort, which Bruning says aims to protect the First Amendment rights of religious organizations.
Last month, the Obama administration made a politically charged decision that the nation's new health care law requires insurance plans at Catholic institutions to include birth control without co-payments for employees. Churches are exmpted, however, church-affiliated institutions like universities, charities and hospitals, are not.
That decision has upset Roman Catholic leaders.
In the letter to his colleagues, Bruning called the decision, “an unprecedented attack on religious liberty.”
On Wednesday, Obama's aides promised to explore ways to make it more palatable to religious-affiliated institutions, perhaps by allowing some employers to make side insurance plans available that are not directly paid for by the institutions.
However, White House officials insisted the president would not back down from his decision last month that employees at institutions affiliated with religious organizations receive access to contraceptives.
This report contains information from The New York Times.
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