A federal judge in Philadelphia, acting on a lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania, on Friday ordered the Trump administration not to enforce rules that could significantly reduce women’s access to free birth control.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued the injunction, temporarily stopping the government from enforcing the policy change to former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

“Congress hasn't changed the law, so the president can't simply ignore the law with these illegal rules,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a press conference Friday evening in Harrisburg. “We are very pleased that we won the first battle in our fight today, and I look forward to the next step. The administration's new rules, concocted without public notice, and really with no meaningful input from doctors with regard to medicine, are unlawful.”

The health care law required most companies to cover birth control at no additional cost, though it included exemptions for religious organizations and some private companies.

The Trump policy would allow more categories of employers, including publicly traded companies, to opt out of providing free contraception to women by claiming religious objections. It would allow any company that is not publicly traded to deny coverage on moral grounds.

The Obama administration had exempted strictly religious organizations, such as churches, from a requirement that women employees get ​free contraceptives​ as a preventive​-​care measure after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The ​​administration did require that female employees of faith-based schools and charities receive such contraceptives​, and allowed employers to serve notice they were opting out of such coverage, in which case the insurance companies would supply them directly.

But Bishop David Zubik of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh as well as other ​​plaintiffs contended that even serving an opt-out notice would make them complicit in providing contraceptives.

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and Geneva College, a Presbyterian school in Beaver ​Falls, filed separate lawsuits in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging the Obamacare mandate on contraceptives. They settled the suits when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the new policy in October.

As a result, diocese director for communications Ann Rodgers said, "We have asked our attorneys to study the decision but we understand it should have no impact on the previous resolution of our case."

Attorneys for the Trump administration had argued in court documents that the rules were about “protecting a narrow class of sincere religious and moral objectors from being forced to facilitate practices that conflict with their beliefs.”

Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat, sued on the basis that the Trump administration's rules violated various amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and procedures by which the federal government can adopt new rules. He said the federal government must notify the public, publish proposed rules and accept public comments on them before new rules can go into effect.

California, Washington and Massachusetts have also sued the Trump administration over the rules. Delaware, Maryland, New York and Virginia joined California in its effort.

Judge Beetlestone, appointed to the bench by Mr. Obama, called the Trump administration’s exemptions “sweeping” and said they were the “proverbial exception that swallows the rule.”

She was particularly critical of the power to object on moral grounds, saying it “conjured up a world where a government entity is empowered to impose its own version of morality on each one of us. That cannot be right.”

Susan Frietsche, senior staff attorney from the Pittsburgh-based Women's Law Project, said Friday’s ruling was “very well grounded in firmly established law. This isn't a ruling you'd characterize as novel or adventurous.”

She said the opinion was “plainspoken in its criticism of the government's failure to follow established procedures, and very direct about the fact that the failure was not harmless. ... We have an unplanned pregnancy rate in Pennsylvania that is higher than the national average, so of course depriving women of no-cost contraception will inflect enormous harm.”

The ruling encouraged Mr. Shapiro, who said he believes the judge's injunction is a sign “that we are likely to succeed on the merits of the case when it is finally addressed in the court.”

“This is just the first step, but today is a critical victory for millions of women and families and for the rule of the law,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The harm from this rule was immediate. Women need contraception for their health, because contraception is medicine, pure and simple.”

The Associated Press and staff writer Chris Potter contributed to this report.

First Published: December 16, 2017, 8:13 p.m.