By Mindy Fischer
On Monday the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. They ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations who have religious objections to birth control no longer have to pay for insurance coverage of those contraceptives, as mandated under Obamacare. This decision actually marks the first time that the court has ever declared that for-profit corporations can hold religious views under federal law. But it is certainly not the first time that this court has made it clear that they believe that corporations are people.
While this ruling is disappointing to Liberals and those on the side of Pro-Choice, it is important to notice that this ruling only affects a small number of people and businesses. The decision written by Samuel Alito, specified that it only applied to closely-held corporations who have 50% or more of the company owned by 5 people or fewer.
There are a few things that I find very interesting about this case and ruling. For one, I worry that this case opens the door to all sorts of other cases based on religious grounds. I mean, what if Hobby Lobby, or another corporation who fits into this category decides that because their religious beliefs tell them that homosexuality is wrong, they will no longer offer insurance that covers HIV treatment?
And another concern I have is that this entire ruling is based on non-science. Hobby Lobby didn’t want to cover certain types of contraceptives. To be more specific, they objected to any drugs or devices that they believe cause abortion. They didn’t want to offer any birth control that would affect an already fertilized egg. And they specifically called out the morning after pill.
Of course, the problem with this is that SCIENCE shows us that the morning after pill actually does NOT cause abortions. Apparently all of the women on the Supreme Court understand this concept. But once again the old Conservative men on the court have shown that they would rather base their rulings on hearsay and rumors.
Another thing that I believe will prove interesting with this is how it will affect Democratic turnout in November. This certainly works as a great rallying call for the left. And Congressional Dems are already promising to find a way to make sure that ALL women have access to contraception.
You know, the really ironic part of this story is that Hobby Lobby and Conservatives claim that they were fighting this mandate because they are so against abortion. But without affordable access to contraception, there will surely be more abortions. I’m not sure that they thought this one all the way through…..
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Mindy Fischer is a lefty-liberal, freelance political writer. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter. |
It seems to me that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in no way protects the right of atheists to obey their moral conscience. This decision only protects the rights of the religious to obey their moral conscience, and only insofar as their motivation is based in religious dogma. What if I think contraception is wrong for nonreligious reasons?
…not to mention the fact that (a) Hobby Lobby’s pension plans are invested in corporations that provide exactly the contraceptive methods that they claim to object to and (b) Until recently, Hobby Lobby’s health insurance plan offered those same methods that they say they object to; they only dropped that coverage a few years ago and approximately contemporaneously to the time they filed their lawsuit.
Funny-I must go to the wrong church.
I never saw a corporation in the pews.
And none of them put any money in the offering.
Does Wal-mart have a soul?
Oooof. Basing modern life on ancient texts. Maybe I should run my life based on the divinely inspired texts of Homer, Hesiod, or Pindar. Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the NT was written in Greek decades later. We don’t know what he said let alone meant. The Hebrew Bible – a problematic series of texts that also acknowledges the existence of many gods, consigns whole nations to genocide and ethnic cleansing, and which was cobbled together over centuries. We are intimate with the life of Cicero, but know comparatively nothing about Abraham, Moses, David (all of whom may be fictions), Jesus, and Mohammed. Get over it people! Humans living their lives based on Mumbo-Jumbo – and they do it on purpose! Nay, they are dogmatic about their ignorance. Hit head on wall . . . head on wall . . . head on wall. Repeat repeat repeat.
Can we please just wrest society from the hands of Witch Doctors and give it to the rational people now?
There is nothing left to do but to rail and rant on the street – religion over human health. Yeah, that’s a fucking great idea.
Drink some coffee — you’ll feel better, and perhaps feeling better perceive that what protects the rights of those wishing, as you see it, to live their lives under the dictates of witch doctors is precisely what protects your right to hold, and act on, that opinion.
Obviously, rulings like this are planned out to interlock with future laws, state initiatives, and other right-wing mischief so as to give the old privileged classes, white, rich, male & Christian, the “freedom” to reduce the rest of us to poverty, servitude, imprisonment, and oppression. “Restoring” the old days means they’re about outcomes, not principles. Look at the clever asymmetries used in the early Jim Crow laws to disproportionately disenfranchise blacks, after which it was easy to pass new laws that were blatantly discriminatory. Thus will freedom be defined in the future, so that gays, women, blacks, the poor, Moslems, etc., will find it consists of nothing that they want.
“Obviously, rulings like this are planned out to interlock with future laws, state initiatives, and other right-wing mischief so as to give the old privileged classes, white, rich, male & Christian, the “freedom” to reduce the rest of us to poverty, servitude, imprisonment, and oppression.” That’s quite a plan — actually Hobby Lobby and Conestoga simply point out that what the plaintiffs below seek can readily be provided by HHS’s granting the same right to for-profit corporations as it does to non-profit corporations, with the obligation and cost of providing coverage shitted to the corporation’s health insurance provider.
These five justices are: (1) men, who never have had and never will have any personal experience of health issues unique to women; (2) older and economically secure, unlike tens of millions of women of childbearing years; (3) personally secure, unlikely to be the vicitms of rape, or have to deal at all with pregnancy and birth, the most significant consequence of sexual activity; and (4) all Roman Catholics, loyal and devoted to their church’s teachings, including those on sexual and familial matters that condemn contraception and abortion. Why is the last never mentioned or commented on in media reporting? It may not be a politic subject to bring up, but it is not irrelevant.
The holding was 6-3, not 5-4.
The Court did not say and has never said that corporations “are people”; the Court has said for well over a century that for purposes of invoking constitutional protections against government intrusion corporations are “persons”. Before you criticize that principle think whether any charitable or for profit organization whose work and purpose you support is a corporation.
“These five justices . . . ” Whatever else,we should count the votes correctly. Six justice supported the holding. Kennedy’s concurrence is very important, and makes a contribution well beyond the contours of the two cases it directly addresses. And the six male justices did nothing to prevent women employees of Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood Specialties from receiving insurance coverage for any of the contraceptives at issue in these two cases. On the contrary, the Court noted that the HHS (headed by a woman) has the same authority to grant an exemption to for-profit corporations just as it has to non-profit corporations, with the burden of providing coverage without additional charge to the employee or to the employee shifted to the insurance provider.