Merged Hobby lobby and the slippery slope/SCOTUS decision

[SezMe]

Here's the actual verbiage:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

Now do explain how this decision creates or upholds a law to establish a religion.

Five male, Catholic judges have carved out an exception to general secular law by granting an ability for HL to discriminate based on one particular sects interpretation of their religious beliefs. They specifically excluded other religious beliefs (blood transfusions). They said this exception does not apply to racial discrimination.

They did NOT say the same for LBGT people. Quelle surprise!

Government preference of one religion over another is at the very heart of the First. This decision, by preferring one religion over another, is what violates the First. In fact, I think it's the worst aspect of it.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

And if their money pays for something objectionable, which it does, it IS their business.

What is it about paying money to an insurance company that retains Hobby's Lobby's claim to that money such that they can object to the insurance company's use of it for specific purposes? What is it about paying money to an employee that revokes Hobby Lobby's claim to that money such that they can not object to the employee's use of it for specific purposes?

 

[MattusMaximus]

My friends with the DNC tell me fundraising went over the top yesterday. Including a record number of people who they did not have in their database at all!

Yup, I've been hearing the same thing via my political contacts. This decision could be a galvanizing one for Democrats (women, specifically).

 

[petrov2500]

That's very short sighted.

The government (aka the public) being responsible for the medical care of many citizens has an interest in preventative care that keeps the total cost of medical care down. The preventative care that would benefit everyone was determined by experts and evidence. Birth control was one of those cost saving items.

Apparently Hobby Lobby does plan to only selectively ban some forms of birth control, so one can argue the methods banned except for plan B may have little impact. And Alito has hinted he might rule against the nuns who not only don't want to pay for insurance for birth control coverage, they don't want it included if anyone else pays for it either.

Hobby Lobby is not "banning" anything. They are simply not providing for it as part of their worker's compensation. You can't assume that workers at Hobby Lobby even want the forms of birth control that are not being provided. Less money towards birth control could mean an earlier raise, for example, which may be more beneficial for employes.

 

[Kestrel]

Hobby Lobby is not "banning" anything. They are simply not providing for it as part of their worker's compensation. You can't assume that workers at Hobby Lobby even want the forms of birth control that are not being provided. Less money towards birth control could mean an earlier raise, for example, which may be more beneficial for employes.

The costs of handling a few more expectant mothers swamps the savings from limiting access to contraception. The Supreme Court decision went beyond what Hobby Lobby wanted and allows corporations to provide insurance without access to any form of contraception.

 

[petrov2500]

The costs of handling a few more expectant mothers swamps the savings from limiting access to contraception. The Supreme Court decision went beyond what Hobby Lobby wanted and allows corporations to provide insurance without access to any form of contraception.

Can you provide a link? I am really not sure if the decision applies to all contraception or just the specific ones objected to by Hobby Lobby.

 

[Ziggurat]

That's very short sighted.

The government (aka the public) being responsible for the medical care of many citizens has an interest in preventative care that keeps the total cost of medical care down.

Yes, that's an interest. But it's still much less of an interest than making people pay taxes. The state cannot function without the ability to compel tax payment. The state can function (and has up until now) without compelling employers to cover birth control.

Furthermore, are you of the opinion that the government should compel everyone to do what's best? Because I think that's a pretty damned authoritarian, if not outright totalitarian, vision of what government should be. We do not need to live in a country where everyone does what is optimal. In fact, it's a dangerous fiction that government control can even achieve that.

So none of your arguments for why it's better to provide all forms of birth control coverage carry any weight in terms of compelling that action through government's threats of violence. You can convince me that private individuals and groups should choose to provide that coverage (I already thought that), but that's not enough.

 

[Ziggurat]

I missed that post.

It's wrong. Health insurance doesn't have to be used for contraception either.

Which would be relevant if the debate was about paying for some nebulous "health insurance". But it's not. It's specifically about paying for specific forms of contraceptive coverage. And yes, when you pay for specific forms of contraceptive coverage, your money will be used for those forms of contraceptive coverage. That's how it works.

Health Insurance is a compensation that already has a more limited use than money, yet both can be used for the same exact behavior that Hobby Lobby doesn't want to support. Yet they limit one even further and the other not at all.

Yes, they do: they have zero input on how salary is used. They have direct input on how health insurance is used, because it WILL BE used for what it covers. That's not an abstract possibility, it's a guarantee.

Hobby Lobby's interest in limiting access to these contraception methods seems limited only by what they are legally allowed to do, and won't cost them lost profits. Neither more specifically enables sin than the other. Actually, the money enables more, broader, (and better!) sin.

But not specifically sin. The choice is completely up to someone else, and the payment of salary does nothing to encourage sinful choice. But the coverage of sinful procedures does specifically encourage those sinful procedures. That is, in fact, the explicit purpose of coverage.

Further, the government already proved it's interest in defining what constitutes health insurance, and it's compelling interest in making sure as much of the population as possible has it.

The government's interest in this particular form of coverage is not compelling. The large number of exceptions demonstrate that abundantly.

 

[Kestrel]

Can you provide a link? I am really not sure if the decision applies to all contraception or just the specific ones objected to by Hobby Lobby.

Search the ruling for "It is so ordered" and read the text immediately proceeding that phrase.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

I expect this is b/c half of the voters pay little or no tax...

Incorrect.

This is meant to be a place to discuss skepticism and critical thinking...

See above.

 

[Buckaroo]

This is great! Now all those who scream bloody murder about "special rights" being granted to various classes of people will now surely join us in objecting to Hobby Lobby et al. having the special right to opt out of federal law! Right?...

...guys?

 

[theprestige]

This is great! Now all those who scream bloody murder about "special rights" being granted to various classes of people will now surely join us in objecting to Hobby Lobby et al. having the special right to opt out of federal law! Right?...

...guys?

If we were going to object to this, we would have objected back in 1993 when the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed with bipartisan support, including yea votes from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. That's the statue the Court considered here, and that's the statute they upheld when ruling for Hobby Lobby.

Personally, I would encourage anyone who thinks they have rights that are guaranteed by the RFRA, to exercise those rights, and to take the Federal government to court if they think those rights are being infringed.

 

[Buckaroo]

I see a lot of this in the discussions I'm following:

"This decision is appalling."
"You just haven't read the decision!!11 *splutter splutter* RFRA!!! *yargle blargle*"

Here's the thing: no one is arguing that there isn't a tortured legal justification for this decision. There always is, even in the worst judicial decisions. It's the existence of such specious justification that is appalling, in that it demonstrates that there is little actual justice to be found in the law.

 

[nelsondogg]

Can you provide a link? I am really not sure if the decision applies to all contraception or just the specific ones objected to by Hobby Lobby.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling.

Link

 

[theprestige]

Since HL isn't a church

You're starting to get it.

Yeah, but you're not. The Court made it clear that their decision did not depend on the status of HL as a church. Instead, it depended on the status of the owners of HL as actual human beings, with actual human rights:

As we will show, Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA’s definition of “persons.” But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings.
[...]
When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people. For example, extending Fourth Amendment protection to corporations protects the privacy interests of employees and others associated with the company. Protecting corporations from government seizure of their property without just compensation protects all those who have ae a stake in the corporations’ financial well-being. And protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies.
[...]
The plain terms of RFRA make it perfectly clear that Congress did not discriminate in this way against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf

No churches involved in the decision. Just human beings with human rights.

Are you starting to get it yet?

 

[BenBurch]

This is the end of the GOP. I am loving this.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Don't you? Hobby Lobby did, in fact, root through every employees insurance plan, made simple because Hobby Lobby arranged the insurance plans in question. Whether Hobby Lobby pays for a plan on the employees behalf, or pays the employee who, in turn, pays for a plan, the simple fact is: The insurance plan is owned completely by the employee.

Really? Root through? If you make that claim then you need to prove it.

I have no knowledge nor proof of evidence that Hobby Lobby ever knocked any of their employees for using any of the contraceptive methods that Hobby Lobby didn't want to pay for. Do you? There is a difference between disagreeing with what is done and agreeing to pay for it through insurance. If you can prove that claim it should be really easy and you might even make some money writing a story about it for CNN or whomever.

The reality is that Hobby Lobby didn't want to pay for some very specific medical choices across the board. They didn't "Root" through anything, their choices were blanket in nature. They didn't say that "Martha in HR" should be blocked from some specific medicine or procedure but Sarah in shipping should be allowed to have it. That would be specific.

 

[theprestige]

I see a lot of this in the discussions I'm following:

"This decision is appalling."
"You just haven't read the decision!!11 *splutter splutter* RFRA!!! *yargle blargle*"

Here's the thing: no one is arguing that there isn't a tortured legal justification for this decision. There always is, even in the worst judicial decisions. It's the existence of such specious justification that is appalling, in that it demonstrates that there is little actual justice to be found in the law.

Perhaps you could be the first to give us a proper analysis of the legal justification--the ruling is only about 27,000 words, including the dissent--and point out where exactly it fails.

I mean, you could probably start by citing the key arguments of the dissent, and explaining why you find them to be a compelling refutation of the majority position.

It would be nice if someone who thinks the ruling is wrong were able to actually explain what law(s) the Court actually considered, and what the Court actually said about the applicability of the law(s) in this case. Are you that someone. Or are you just another someone who asserts the ruling is wrong but refuses to discuss the details of the ruling itself?

 

[sunmaster14]

If we were going to object to this, we would have objected back in 1993 when the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed with bipartisan support, including yea votes from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. That's the statue the Court considered here, and that's the statute they upheld when ruling for Hobby Lobby.

Personally, I would encourage anyone who thinks they have rights that are guaranteed by the RFRA, to exercise those rights, and to take the Federal government to court if they think those rights are being infringed.

In my opinion, this case is really about the rule of law. The RFRA is a statute that Congress passed with unanimous support in the House and 97-3 in the Senate, and it was signed into law by Clinton. Since the RFRA is a statute, Congress would have been well within its rights to have exempted any provisions of ACA, or regulations promulgated under the authorities created by ACA, from the RFRA. It simply didn't do it. As with so many parts of ACA, supporters are asking that clauses be reinterpreted, or inferred out of whole cloth, in order to keep it from collapsing under the weight of its own horrible design.

This started with the Roberts court reinterpreting the individual mandate penalty as a tax, even though its taxiness was vehemently denied by Democrats when the ACA passed Congress by a hair's breadth. The extra-legislative amendment process has continued with the Obama administration waiving inconvenient provisions willy-nilly and delaying the implementation of politically troublesome mandates.

I'm glad the Supreme Court has finally put a stop to this rewriting of the bill by the executive branch. It undermines the rule of law. If Democrats wanted the contraception mandate to apply regardless of religious objections, they should have specifically exempted Obamacare regulations from the RFRA. If they want to do it now, they should pass an amendment to Obamacare. It's not the Supreme Court's fault that it's not currently political feasible. No take-backs should be the rule. Even kindergartners understand the fairness of that.

 

[gregthehammer]

You know, I don't think Hobby Lobby is very religious at all, I have yet to see them at Sunday Mass! (and don't tell anyone, because you didn't here it from me, but Gertrude told me H.L. isn't even baptized!!)