A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision from U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Mich. rejecting Autocam’s motion for a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of that provision of the health-care law. It sent the case back to the lower court with orders to dismiss the challenges by both the family and the corporations.

Other courts have decided differently in other challenges so the issue may eventually work its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled that the Kennedy family cannot use a private, for-profit, secular corporation to assert their own religious views.

The court, however, then went on to find that the corporations, Autocam, are not persons who can engage in “religious exercise.”

Judge Gibbons was appointed to the bench in 2002 by then Republican President George W. Bush. Also sitting on the panel were Circuit Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, a 2010 Democratic appointee by President Obama, and U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood, of Michigan, appointed in 1994 by then Democratic President Bill Clinton.