The Supreme Court Decision on June 30 to allow Hobby Lobby to circumvent the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate may carry dire consequences for women across the country.

Ruling 5-4, Hobby Lobby won protection under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which restricts the government from substantially burdening the exercise of religion without first satisfying a demanding legal test. This allows a closely held for-profit corporation to be exempt from a law that is in conflict with its religious beliefs. As a result of this decision, Hobby Lobby is no longer required by law to include contraception in its government-mandated employee health insurance plans. This is the first case in which the Supreme Court has recognized a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs.

Hobby Lobby President Steve Green and his family are devoted Southern Baptists, and when Green discovered that Hobby Lobby was offering emergency contraceptive services in its employee insurance plans, he called for the insurer to cancel plans and signed onto the lawsuit at hand, according to the Washington Post.

Hobby Lobby officials told the Wall Street Journal that religious participation is optional for its 28,000 employees.

“If they don’t believe in God, we love them where they are,” Dianna Bradley, the company’s director of chaplain services, had told Wall Street Journal.

For Hobby Lobby employees, religious participation is optional — regardless of participation however, access to contraceptives is not. This groups all Hobby Lobby employees receiving benefits under the umbrella of the Greens’ devoted Southern Baptist beliefs.

Sounds like religious freedom.

But the problem is larger than Hobby Lobby’s policies themselves.

It sets a precedent: now that Hobby Lobby has the right to deny this service, other religiously affiliated corporations will follow suit. And those workers will no longer have access to contraceptives that, in many cases, are necessary for good health.

Birth control is also referred to by many as “hormone pills,” because it gives women extra synthetic estrogen and/or progestin. This can have several health benefits, like stopping acne from growing, alleviating menstrual cramps and helping young women cope with certain disorders like endometriosis and amenorrhea.

Because contraception is a normal and necessary component of women’s health care, denying contraception to women based on religious beliefs may contradict the purpose of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate in the first place.