“Here we go again,” said Russell Moore, president of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. “What we see here is another revised attempt to settle issues of religious conscience with accounting maneuvers. This new policy doesn’t get at the primary problem.”

The Obama administration, still facing legal challenges to its requirement that employer health plans provide no-cost birth control to female employees, outlined a new policy Friday to ensure that female workers at religiously-affiliated nonprofits can still receive contraception, even if their employers object.

The administration also intends to offer a similar work-around to for-profit businesses after the Supreme Court’s bitterly debated 5-4 decision in June that owners of closely held firms could refuse contraception coverage if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The new federal guidelines address a set of ongoing legal challenges to the contraceptive requirement raised by dozens of religious nonprofit groups, such as hospitals and charities, that could again put the contraception mandate before the Supreme Court. The religious nonprofits are challenging the administration’s already existing opt-out, in which the groups can ask a third party to provide the contraception coverage to their employees. However, the nonprofits say that filling out the form notifying the third party violates their religious beliefs.

The nonprofits can now directly inform the Department of Health and Human Services of their religious objections. HHS and the Labor Department will then coordinate contraception coverage with insurers and third party administrators. The nonprofits still have the option to notify a third party directly.

The new guidelines are a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in July to temporarily exempt a nonprofit, Wheaton College in Illinois, from the contraception coverage requirement. A majority of the justices — over the sharp objections of the court’s three female justices — said filling out the exemption form violated the institution’s religious beliefs.

In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the administration also proposed similar accommodations for businesses that oppose the mandate.

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