The implementation of the rule was successfully halted in the lower courts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. With the help of Catholic nonprofit Little Sisters of the Poor and the Department of Justice, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to reverse those adjudications.

The nearly two hours long arguments were conducted by phone keeping social distancing restrictions in mind and it came to end just before noon. A decision is likely to be taken over the summer. It remains to be seen which side ends up garnering more votes to form a majority, CNBC reported.

If government estimates are anything to go by, over 125,000 women are likely to lose their contraceptive coverage if the Trump administration wins. This is a high-profile case that has come up at the time Donald Trump is gearing up for the Nov. election, hoping to be reelected as the president.

Trump's 2016 campaign that opposed the contraceptive coverage mandate and won thanks primarily to the support he received from religious groups. His current Democratic rival, Joe Biden served as the vice president at the time this provision that became the contraceptive coverage mandate was first signed into law under the Affordable Care Act, which is the health care revamp popularly known as Obamacare.

Liberal justices comprising Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was calling in from Baltimore's Johns Hopkins hospital after undergoing a benign gallbladder condition treatment on Tuesday, said that the Trump administration was breaking the law by and bypassing Congress’s plan to offer free contraceptive coverage to American women by passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Ginsburg accused Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who represented the Trump administration of completely discarding what Congress deemed essential and restricting women's access to these free services. Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh deemed the case as difficult given that both sides had equally strong interests.

As part of rules implemented under President Barack Obama, houses of worship including churches were exempted from the contraceptive coverage mandate. Religious nonprofits, on the other hand, qualified for accommodation, which allowed their employees to receive contraceptive coverage without paying for it.

During the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores case, the Supreme Court extended the accommodation to a few for-profit businesses; however, religious employers objected claiming that having to inform the government or even the insurer of the religious disagreement associated them with the unethical activity of providing the coverage. The Supreme Court turned down a request to issue a substantial ruling in a case comprising these objections in 2016.