The Notice of Violation explains:
... [T]he only exemption California offered (to a health plan issuer) was limited to plans covering a narrow set of “religious employers” under California law. However, the Weldon Amendment protects from discrimination all plans that decline to cover abortion, without requiring any plan issuers, sponsors, or beneficiaries to have a religious character or have a religious reason for not providing or paying for such coverage.... [E]ven a categorical exemption of “religious employers,” as defined by California law, would have only been available to approximately 37% of those employer groups who, prior to the Mandate Letters, had health care coverage that limited or excluded abortion.
The Notice of Violation concludes:
If OCR does not receive sufficient assurance that California will cease requiring all health care plans, as a class, to cover abortion, or that it is willing to negotiate in good faith towards that end, OCR will forward this Notice of Violation and the evidence supporting OCR’s findings in this matter to the appropriate HHS funding components for further action under applicable grants and contracts regulations. Such referral may ultimately result in limitations on continued receipt of certain HHS funds in accordance with the Constitution and applicable Supreme Court case law.HHS also issued a press release explaining its action which in part quotes the Director of HHS's Office of Civil Rights:
We are putting California on notice that it must stop forcing people of good will to subsidize the taking of human life, not only because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s the law.
