The Biden administration is withdrawing a proposed regulation that would have limited which employers can be exempted from a mandate to cover birth control for their employees.  

The Department of Health and Human Services published a notice in the Federal Register on Monday that said it was withdrawing a regulation that would have rolled back the “non-religious moral objections” exemption to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. 

According to the notice, the decision was made so that HHS officials could “focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules.” 

The Biden administration estimated the proposed regulation would have made an additional 130,000 people eligible for birth control coverage, Politico noted. The regulation also would have given employees who work for religious organizations that declined to cover contraception the ability to access birth control for free from a healthcare provider. 

The decision to withdraw the proposal means that a regulation implemented by President Trump’s administration will stay in place. 

Trump’s administration unveiled the exemptions in 2017, which vastly expanded the pool of employers that could be exempted from the mandate to cover contraception for their employees. Under the existing regulation, large or small and religious or secular companies can claim an exemption. 

A group that represented nuns who opposed the Affordable Care Act’s mandate, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, celebrated the news that the Biden administration withdrew the proposed restrictions.

“Christmas came a little early this year,” the post stated. “[HHS] unilaterally withdrew proposed new rules governing the Contraceptive Mandate — the same mandate which originally tried to force the Little Sisters to cover abortions in their employee healthcare plans.”

The Biden administration has been busy issuing new regulations and spending money on various projects before the clock runs out and Trump takes office. However, it has also been quietly withdrawing proposed regulations that are unlikely to be finalized before January 20.

The Education Department announced it withdrew what was known as President Biden’s “Plan B” for student loan cancellation. That proposal would have granted debt cancellation to borrowers who saw their balances balloon due to interest, those who attended a “low-value” school that did not comply with federal standards, and people who took out loans more than 20 years ago and qualified for debt relief but did not apply for it. 

A second student loan plan that the administration pulled was introduced in October. It would have given the Education secretary the authority to cancel all of a borrower’s loans if it was determined that they were facing economic hardship. 

On Friday, the Education Department and the Office for Civil Rights also withdrew a 2023 proposed Title IX rule change that would have prevented schools from issuing blanket bans on transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that do not match their biological sex. 

The proposals may have been withdrawn because Biden officials believed they would be scrapped by the incoming administration anyway. 

However, the Associated Press reported there is an “administration-wide plan to jettison pending regulations” before Trump takes office. The outlet notes that once a proposal goes through a public comment period, as the Title IX initiative did, it can be rewritten and finalized without having to go through the comment period again. By withdrawing the proposals, the Trump administration will be required to start the lengthy process of implementing its own rule changes from scratch.

Another possible reason to withdraw the regulation is a concern that if they are finalized, they could be challenged in court, which could invalidate the legal argument for similar proposals in the future.