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A corporation having
religious beliefs. Who knew? The Court's decision created a slippery slope as
seen by this attempt to discriminate against gays due to a corporation's
"religious beliefs". We all know that corporations run America and
they've been given way too many rights by our current Court formerly
reserved for people. So far it's been freedom of speech in Citizens United and
now religion in the Hobby Lobby case. We've barely begun to see the repercussions
of awarding rights to corporations – the same corporations that own
Congress.
Limiting Rights: Imposing
Religion on Workers
JUNE 30, 2014
The Supreme Court’s deeply
dismaying decision on Monday in the Hobby Lobby case swept
aside accepted principles of corporate law and religious liberty to grant
owners of closely held, for-profit companies an unprecedented right to impose
their religious views on employees.
It was the first time the
court has allowed commercial business owners to deny employees a federal
benefit to which they are entitled by law based on the owners’ religious
beliefs, and it was a radical departure from the court’s history of resisting
claims for religious exemptions from neutral laws of general applicability when
the exemptions would hurt other people.
The full implications of
the decision, which ruled in favor of employers who do not want to include
contraceptive care in their company health plans, as required by the Affordable
Care Act, will not be known for some time. But the immediate effect, as Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in a powerful dissent, was to deny many thousands of
women contraceptive coverage vital to their well-being and reproductive
freedom. It also invites, she said, other “for-profit entities to seek
religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their
faiths.”
The case involved challenges
by two companies, Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga
Wood Specialties, a cabinet maker, to the perfectly reasonable requirement that
employer health plans cover (without a co-payment) all birth control methods
and services approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The main
battleground was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which says
government may not “substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion”
unless the burden is necessary to further a “compelling government interest”
and achieves it by “the least restrictive means.”
As a threshold matter,
Justice Samuel Alito Jr., read the act’s religious protections to apply to “the
humans who own and control” closely held companies, an interpretation
contradicted by the statute’s history, context, and wording. He then found that
the contraceptive coverage rules put a “substantial burden” on the religious
owners, who objected to some of the items on the F.D.A.’s list based on the
incorrect claim they induce abortions.
It’s hard to see that burden.
Nothing in the contraceptive coverage rule prevented the companies’ owners from
worshiping as they choose or advocating against coverage and use of the
contraceptives they don’t like.
Nothing compels women to use
their insurance on contraceptives. A woman’s choice to use or not to use them
is a personal one that does not implicate her employer. Such decisions “will be
the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults,” as
Justice Ginsburg noted. There also is no requirement that employers offer
employee health plans. They could instead pay a tax likely to be less than the
cost of providing insurance to help cover government subsidies available to
those using an insurance exchange. That did not convince Justice Alito and his
colleagues on the court’s right flank, who bought the plaintiffs’ claim that
providing health coverage to employees was part of their religious mission.
The majority’s finding that
the government’s contraception coverage rules were not the “least restrictive”
way to carry out the broad and complex health reform was also unpersuasive.
Mr. Alito’s ruling and a
concurrence by Justice Anthony Kennedy portray the decision as a narrow one
without broader application, like denying vaccine coverage or job
discrimination. But that is not reassuring coming from justices who missed the
point that denying women access to full health benefits is discrimination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/the-supreme-court-imposing-religion-on-workers.html?emc=edit_th_20140701&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65886944
See also:
What the Hobby Lobby Ruling
Means for America
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