Merged Hobby lobby and the slippery slope/SCOTUS decision

[Neally]

The owners religious rights shouldn't trump neutrally implemented societal laws.

Obviously not everything about the law is "neutral". Reasonable minds can disagree on the morality of abortion.

It's Hobby Lobby that's framing it as about some specific part of health insurance that they don't want to pay for and I see no good reason to allow that framing. They don't get to pick what constitutes health insurance any more than they get to pick what constitutes money or taxes.

They are not picking what constitutes health insurance. They have a religious objection to paying for something that is included in health insurance.

It very much is about what is and what is not real health insurance. Real health insurance includes this coverage.

LOL - there is no such thing as an objective definition of what coverages are included in "real" health insurance.

Again, I strongly disagree. I'd rather we had single payer, but if that's not possible then companies will should just have to deal with part of the required compensation being health coverage as defined by the government, just like money is defined by the government.

The government overstepped what was included in the mandated insurance by failing to account for the fact that some of the coverages are in conflict with religious rights.

The net result is that the religious beliefs of the owners took priority over the religious beliefs and medical needs of the employees.

No. Why do the posters against this decision keep trying the claim that employee's religious beliefs have been affected? The decsion has zero impact on their religious rights. At least Upchurch finally admitted no religious rights of employees were impacted.

 

[ponderingturtle]

So now that all the arguments against the decision have petered out, we are left with simply attacking religion in general? At least you could try to weave it into arguments repealing that part of the first amendment.

I am still waiting on why being forced to pay for some immoral medical treatments are ok, such as vaccines and blood transfusions but this is such an imposition.

The main thing seems to be those who sided with them belong to a religion that agrees that birth control is immoral but does not take a stand against vaccines or blood transfusions.

So how do we determine which counter factual claims made by religions deserve protections and which do not?

 

[Upchurch]

At least Upchurch finally admitted no religious rights of employees were impacted.

I think you mean that I pointed out that you were making a straw man argument.

 

[AlBell]

I was just pointing out that having a sincere belief is not equivalent to having a reasonable belief.

The court explicitly limited this ruling to contraceptionabortion drugs/iuds, but the logic of the majority decision could be applied to any sincerly held religious belief of the owners of a closely held company. The five Catholic men only applied it to a belief that conformed with the official position of their own church.

The net result is that the religious beliefs of the owners took priority over the religious beliefs and medical needs of the employees.

ftfy.

If employees have other religious beliefs they are working for the wrong employer imo.

 

[Neally]

I am still waiting on why being forced to pay for some immoral medical treatments are ok, such as vaccines and blood transfusions but this is such an imposition.

The reasoning was explained in detail in the decision beginning on page 45. Here you go: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf

What are you waiting for?

I think you mean that I pointed out that you were making a straw man argument.

I think you mean you never specified what so called "rights" were being suppressed. When you finally said that it was privacy rights, I pointed out that there were no privacy rights either being violated by the decision.

 

[Upchurch]

I think you mean you never specified what so called "rights" were being suppressed.

And you made a straw man based on an ill-founded assumption on your part.

When you finally said that it was privacy rights, I pointed out that there were no privacy rights either being violated by the decision.

You claimed. You have not supported that claim, as far as I have seen.

 

[Neally]

And you made a straw man based on an ill-founded assumption on your part.

Hardly ill-founded. The discussion and dialog centered on religious rights. Remember when you said, "I am very pro-First Amendment, but I also recognize that one person's (or company's) First Amendment rights are not unlimited and do not allow them to trump someone else's rights." FYI privacy rights are in the 4th amendment, not the first.

You claimed. You have not supported that claim, as far as I have seen.

Sorry, I can't support a negative. The onus is on you to to detail what privacy rights have been violated by the decision.

 

[Upchurch]

Pardon if it has already been posted, but I thought this blog post summed it up nicely:

So in summary, these are the big issues:

Substantial burden analysis is empty. Just claim that something burdens your religion, and the Court is fine with you relying on blatantly false statements (x pill is an abortifacient) and does not care if you rely on illogical leaps (an employee using an insurance card I gave them to purchase birth control affects my religious beliefs but an employee using the paycheck I gave them to purchase birth control does not) or attenuated connections (even if I never know whether an employee ever uses their health insurance to use this particular contraceptive, my religious beliefs are still burdened).

The religious non-profit workaround was crucial to the majority’s decision that there is a less restrictive means available. But that workaround is also currently being challenged as a violation of RFRA. What will happen if the workaround is struck down too?

Corporations now have an incentive to adopt anti-healthcare religious beliefs in order to avoid paying for insurance coverage. Each healthcare procedure/prescription will have to be analyzed under strict scrutiny, to see whether the government actually has a compelling interest to see that you get that kind of coverage and whether the government has used the least restrictive means possible to provide you with that coverage. It would be far simpler to go directly to a single payer system—but we’re not getting that through Congress anytime soon. The Court has thus empowered the Religious Right to chip away at the ACA case by case.

YMMV

 

[Beerina]

I didn't think this was based on constitutional law but a different federal law protecting religions.

Yes, both the affordable care act and religious freedom act create rights for you. The ruling was based on the latter and not on the First Amendment.

I read an interesting article on whether meta laws like the RFRA naturally overrode later laws, if those later laws did not explicitely state so. While a past congress cannot bind a future pne, there seems something wrong with having implied rather than explicit override in later laws.

"No law shall be construed as violating (some religious freedom definition) unless it explicitely states so." Seems reasonable to me and most people, even if you disagree with it as an idea. It can be used for many different things.

 

[Mister Earl]

Well, here we are. First step on the road to a theocracy. It was a good run.

If I'm feeling optimistic I can halfway fool myself into thinking that maybe the great experiment wants to check the control group

#EDIT: Oh, look. "Religious" organizations want to use this precedent to protect them from the absolute horrors of hiring gay people: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/religious-groups-lgbt-hiring-hobby-lobby?yaypotatoes

 

[Ziggurat]

As an amusing random aside, there's a blog that provides coverage of the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog. They also have a twitter feed. Apparently a number of people mistook their feed for an official Supreme Court twitter feed, and directed quite a bit of rage at them over the recent Hobby Lobby decision. They had fun trolling the confused. Some of my favorites:

Confiscating birth control
being ashamed
holy cows
dishonoring versus disrobing
Where to put robes
signing tweets
what humans can do that corporations can't

 

[eeyore1954]

Here is what I view as another amusing random aside (though I feel some here see this as the next step)
Supreme Court Upholds Little Caesar’s Right to Feed Christian Employees to Lions

 

[Neally]

Here is what I view as another amusing random aside (though I feel some here see this as the next step)
Supreme Court Upholds Little Caesar’s Right to Feed Christian Employees to Lions

Theocracy is here! Christian sharia law has arrived!

 

[The_Animus]

and it starts

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/religious-groups-lgbt-hiring-hobby-lobby

 

[Mister Earl]

I think I beat ya to it by a couple minutes

 

[Upchurch]

Theocracy is here! Christian sharia law has arrived!

and it starts

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/religious-groups-lgbt-hiring-hobby-lobby

That was unfortunately timed.

 

[sunmaster14]

I think I beat ya to it by a couple minutes

Both of you are late. Dessi started a thread on this three hours ago.

 

[Mister Earl]

Credit to Dessni, then.

And it just goes to show the slippery slope system in the works... less than a full day from the ruling and people are already breaking out the slip-and-slide. It confounds me that people are tripping themselves over to be the first one to do ill against their fellow man, just because they feel they can get away with it.

 

[Ziggurat]

And it just goes to show the slippery slope system in the works...

It's a little premature to be coming to that conclusion. Until those cases resolve (and they may not resolve in the plaintiff's favor), you really don't know if the slope is slippery at all.

 

[Neally]

That was unfortunately timed.

Read it before I posted. Perfectly timed I'd say. Add this--Jim Crow is back!