Detroit — The U.S. Supreme Court has asked a lower court to reconsider a lawsuit filed by the Michigan Catholic Conference and other Catholic groups against the federal government’s contraception mandate.

The justices on April 27 threw out a decision in favor of the Obama administration’s rule, commonly known as the HHS mandate, asking the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to reconsider the lawsuit in light of the high court’s Hobby Lobby decision last year. That decision upheld private businesses’ rights to refuse to provide contraception, sterilization or abortion-inducing drugs as part of their health plans under religious liberty protections, but challenges from nonprofits such as the Michigan Catholic Conference, which administers benefits for thousands of Catholic workers in the state, have yet to be fully resolved.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision was the sixth time it has bounced cases back to lower courts since the Hobby Lobby ruling.

“The government keeps making the same bad arguments and the Supreme Court keeps rejecting them — every single time. This is because the government can obviously come up with ways to distribute contraceptives without the forced involvement of Catholic ministries,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which filed an amicus brief in the case. “As with the Supreme Court’s decisions in Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby, this is a strong signal that the Supreme Court will ultimately reject the government’s narrow view of religious liberty. And it makes it less likely that lower courts will accept arguments the Supreme Court has rejected over and over and over again.”

In June 2014, the appeals court lifted a temporary injunction against the mandate for the Michigan Catholic Conference and others, arguing the plaintiffs could avoid participation in the objectionable services via the Obama administration’s “accommodation,” which requires religious nonprofits to “self-certify” their objections to a third party who would then provide the coverage — a solution Catholic groups have rejected as not addressing religious liberty concerns. By not complying with the mandate, Catholic groups face crippling fines that could amount to millions of dollars.

Joining the Michigan Catholic Conference’s lawsuit were challenges by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Kalamazoo, the Diocese of Nashville, Tenn., Catholic Charities of Tennessee, and the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia.

According to the Becket Fund, which tracks lawsuits associated with the mandate, more than 750 plaintiffs in other nonprofit cases have been granted protection from the mandate, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, Wheaton College, the University of Notre Dame and the Diocese of Pittsburgh.