Four years later, the Arkansas law easily cleared that state's Legislature, with help from Republican lawmakers, including two GOP cosponsors. Huckabee signed it in April 2005.
He defended the law in a statement. "Religious employers are not required to comply with this policy," he said. "My position is, and always has been, that religious entities shouldn't be forced to pay for contraception."
But like the original federal regulation proposed by Obama, the Arkansas law did not exempt church-affiliated hospitals and universities. It exempts only "religious employers" that are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is "the inculcation of religious values," and primarily employ people who share the same religion, a standard few Catholic hospitals meet.
