Supreme Court Halts Contraception Mandate For Religious Groups By M. Alex Johnson and Winston Wilde, NBC News Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a last-ditch plea from Catholic groups Tuesday night to block a birth control mandate in the new health care law for religious organizations, just hours before it was to have gone into effect. The archdioceses of Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tenn., the Catholic Conference of Michigan and several affiliated groups requested the emergency stay of provisions of the Affordable Care Act that would require companies — regardless of religious beliefs — to provide contraceptives and other abortion-inducing...