U.S. Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the Obama Administration’s latest bid for compromise over a hotly disputed health policy that requires employees at religiously affiliated institutions to have access to insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Cardinal Timothy Donlan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said his group would redouble efforts to reach an agreement on the contraceptives issue after more than a year of protest and scores of federal lawsuits from Catholics groups and other social conservatives.

But the cardinal, one of the most prominent voices in the American Catholic Church, said new federal rules proposed last week offer only “second-class status” to church-affiliated universities, hospitals and charities by failing to grant them the same full exemption afforded to houses of worship.