Hobby Lobby Stores and Mardel, closely held for-profit corporations owned by the Green family, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, owned by the Hahn family, challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer health plans cover FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing. The owners sincerely believed that providing coverage for four methods could make them complicit in destroying human embryos. The Tenth Circuit held that the companies were persons under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), that the mandate substantially burdened their religious exercise, and that the companies were likely to prevail; the Third Circuit reached the opposite conclusion for Conestoga. The Supreme Court held that RFRA protects closely held for-profit corporations because its broad text protects the people who own and control them. The mandate imposed a substantial burden through severe financial penalties and a direct conflict with the owners’ beliefs. Assuming the government’s interest in cost-free contraceptive access was compelling, the Court held that the mandate was not the least restrictive means because HHS had already created an accommodation for religious nonprofits that could provide equivalent coverage without requiring objecting employers to fund it. The Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit’s judgment in docket 13-354 and reversed and remanded the Third Circuit’s judgment in the companion case, docket 13-356. The decision was limited to the contraceptive mandate. Justice Kennedy concurred; Justice Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justice Sotomayor and, except as to one subsection, Justices Breyer and Kagan, who also filed a separate dissent.