Religious conservatives are one step closer to convincing the federal judiciary to shield corporations by granting them religious rights, thanks to new reasoning in a decision handed down Thursday in the Hobby Lobby case.

Hobby Lobby is challenging the part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires all insurance plans to offer coverage of contraception without a co-pay. At the heart of the case is whether a for-profit company must comply with this provision of the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare. Hobby Lobby is a national craft supply chain headquartered in Oklahoma and has 525 locations and more than 13,000 employees across the country. The company’s owners have objected to providing coverage for emergency contraception and IUDs.

In a long and complicated decision a divided 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that even though arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby and its smaller sister operation Mardel, a Christian-oriented bookstore and educational supply company, are secular, for-profit companies, they have a right to religious freedom under the law and therefore are likely exempt from the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

The decision, which was a combination of six separate opinions totaling 165 pages could be considered a coming attraction of how the lower court will rule when it considers the merits of the question of whether or not the contraception mandate is unconstitutional. On the issue of whether for-profit corporations are religious persons, the Court split five to three with the majority finding that, if they are owned by religiously devout individuals who control the company’s affairs, such corporations are protected by the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law designed to shield individuals from laws that “substantially burden” the free exercise of religion.

More: Court Rules Hobby Lobby Can Be Considered a Religious ‘Person’