If you’ve been following the news, you know that secular, for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby have been challenging the contraceptive mandate that the Department of Health and Human Services has interpreted to be part of the Affordable Care Act.

The idea behind the mandate is simple: Birth control is so widely used for a variety of medical needs that it ought to be covered in every employee’s health-care plan. Because some religious groups oppose all or certain forms of birth control, houses of worship and religious ministries are exempt from the mandate; special accommodations have been made for religiously affiliated entities such as church-related colleges and hospitals.

These accommodations are not enough for some entities, which continue to challenge the mandate in court.

The University of Notre Dame, for example, insists that it should have the right to exclude birth control in the health-care plan it offers to employees and students. But here’s the thing: It already has that right. Under the accommodation being offered, the university is not required to pay for contraceptives. Instead, birth control is offered to those who want it by a completely separate, third-party insurance company.

All Notre Dame has to do is tell the federal government that it does not want to provide birth control – and at that point it is completely free from the mandate. An insurance company will provide it, at no cost to the university.

Amazingly, officials at Notre Dame said this plan still violates the school’s religious liberty rights and filed a lawsuit. Under Notre Dame’s theory, the mere act of telling the federal government that the school doesn’t want to provide birth control somehow makes the school complicit in the private choices of those who decide to provide it and use it.

The good news is that a federal court on Friday night rejected this argument. U.S. District Judge Philip P. Simon denied Notre Dame’s request for a preliminary injunction against the mandate.

Simon (an appointee of President George W. Bush) was not particularly impressed with Notre Dame’s legal argument in the University of Notre Dame v. Sebelius case.

“Notre Dame wants to eat its cake, and have it still, at the expense of Congress, administrative agencies, and the employees who will be affected,” he wrote. “Notre Dame is free to opt out of providing the coverage itself, but it can’t stop anyone else from providing it. But that is essentially what Notre Dame is requesting. Notre Dame is not being asked to do or say anything it doesn’t already do, and wouldn’t do regardless of the outcome of this case; the only thing that changes under the healthcare law is the actions of third parties.”

Elsewhere the judge wrote, “[I]t’s not Notre Dame’s prerogative to dictate what healthcare services third parties may provide.”

That is exactly Americans United’s point. AU is seeking to intervene in this case, representing three female students at Notre Dame who don’t want to lose access to birth control. Judge Simon noted that due to a tight deadline, he did not have time to consider AU’s request and will do so later.

Like a lot of religiously affiliated institutions, Notre Dame likes to have it both ways. The school is more than happy to rake in as much taxpayer support as it can get. (Indiana even has a special tax-credit program that benefits the school.) But it doesn’t want to abide by even the most reasonable of government regulations.

In this case, all the university was asked to do was state that it does not wish to provide birth control. That’s it. Yet doing even that, we are told, somehow infringes on the school’s sensibilities.

Perhaps this isn’t about the school’s alleged right of conscience. Maybe this is about something else: denying access to contraceptives to as many people as possible and warping public policy to conform to ultra-conservative theological views that even the vast majority of Catholics long ago stopped following.

This court, at least, didn’t fall for it.