WASHINGTON — Across the country, women, employers, insurers and health care advocates are trying to adjust to the new legal landscape created by the Supreme Court’s decision allowing some for-profit corporations to deny contraceptive coverage to employees, based on the owners’ religious faith.

As the impact of the controversial ruling Monday slowly begins to play out, questions about its breadth, scope and meaning are being debated.

In the 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that two family-owned corporations, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, did not have to cover birth control on their employee health insurance plans as required under the so-called “contraceptive mandate” provision of the Affordable Care Act.

In the majority ruling, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that it would violate a corporation’s rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to force a business owner to provide coverage for contraceptives if it went against his faith.

Monday’s decision was the first time the high court ruled that closely held corporations have religious rights, like individuals. As defined by the Internal Revenue Service, a closely held company is one with only a handful of shareholders that is not tailored to personal services.

While 90 percent of U.S. companies qualify as closely held, 85 percent of those businesses had already covered contraceptives before the Affordable Care Act became law. For the 52 percent of American workers employed by a closely held corporation, therefore, it is unlikely many will lose contraceptive coverage.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case that attached free speech rights to companies when it comes to campaign contributions, the Hobby Lobby case was another instance where the court viewed corporations in the same legal light as it does individuals.

“The problem that I think jumps out of the Hobby Lobby case is where do you draw the line and how do you decide what corporations believe,” said Steven Wells, a partner at the Minneapolis office of Dorsey & Whitney, an international law firm. “Many corporations have the wherewithal and power that far exceeds that of a human. And to afford them the same kinds of rights can create inequities.”

It didn’t take long for the ruling to be felt. Within hours, the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals exempted the Eternal Word Television Network, a nonprofit Catholic TV network in Alabama, from fines for not complying with the health law requirement that they cover various types of birth control.

And late Monday night, the Supreme Court temporarily barred enforcement of the health law’s contraceptive coverage mandate on behalf of Wheaton College. In Utah, the Little Sisters of the Poor is one of about 50 nonprofit religious organizations that have filed similar suits seeking exemption.

But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in her dissenting opinion, the ruling has prompted outrage from women’s groups and health care advocates who say the decision could establish a precedent for companies to demand religion-based exemptions for all sorts of health services.

“The fact that the court doesn’t see that the same analysis could be applied to immunizations, anti-depressants and blood transfusions is actually one of the most troubling aspects of this because the court seems to be 20 years behind science and evidence,” said Elizabeth Taylor, executive director of the National Health Law Program.