The Supreme Court recently ruled that a “closely held” corporation can refuse to pay for contraception on religious grounds. (The contraceptive mandate was a requirement of the Affordable Care Act.)
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Hobby Lobby (weekend poll)
The Supreme Court recently ruled that a “closely held” corporation can refuse to pay for contraception on religious grounds. (The contraceptive mandate was a requirement of the Affordable Care Act.)
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Wheat & Tares 
Part of me feels that the free market will regulate this sort of thing: people can refuse to work there or can refuse to buy their goods. But then I am bothered that these sorts of things always seem to hurt two otherwise vulnerable groups: the poor (workers who can’t afford to be so choosy about where they work), and women (whose reproductive choices seem to be always targeted by religion).
Having said all that, the reason I’m not too tied up over this one is that it’s not ALL contraception, just post-conception contraceptives that are not included.
I was reading last night in American Grace, and there is an interesting trend emerging in the younger generations: continuing liberal views on sexuality (no surprise there), but less and less tolerance for abortion as contraceptives are more readily accessible to prevent conception (this one’s the surprising trend). But the Hobby Lobby ruling doesn’t rule out contraception, just post-conception contraception, so it’s closer in keeping with the idea of responsible safe sex being OK, but not using post-conception methods to avoid pregnancy for social reasons. Very few people oppose post-conception methods in cases of health, rape, or incest (where the conception was out of the woman’s control or would endanger her health needlessly or result in extreme birth defects). Hobby Lobby seems to be opposing them as a routine method of birth control.
I don’t think Hobby Lobby was a good test case. They will pay for Viagra and men’s vasectomies but not women’s contraception. How is this a victory for women?
Aaron-
Was the question whether or not it was any kind of victory for women? It certainly isn’t and I haven’t seem anyone represent that it could be construed to be in any way since women are probably all over the place on both access to birth control and the protection of religious liberty.
Did you mean did the Supreme Court apply any standard of consistency OR ask why the religious views of an abstract legal “person” were more compelling than than the actual rights of actual people OR why they concluded that the family that incorporated Hobby Lobby was entitled to divest themselves of tax liability by creating a corporation but still able to invest their corporation with their personal religious views? All of those questions seem even more murky following this decision.
I agree with the ruling. To me, it’s ending an existing life. No one should be involved in that-except the two involved in the conception, if that.
The “sincere belief” of Hobby Lobby trumps the science that showed that the contraceptives of which HL disapproves are not abortifacients. Indeed, HL has significant investments in the company that manufactures those contraceptives.
Q: If the corporate veil can be pierced to evaluate the religious beliefs of a corporate entity, where else can the veil be pierced?
Why should the law force us to to get healthcare through our employers? That’s the real question.
Both #3 and #4 demonstrate some of the misconceptions that have been thrown about around this case.
Per #3, in re. “the religious views of an abstract legal ‘person'”, what the Court actually recognized is that the people who own and run corporations have views and rights as well. The ruling had nothing to do with the rights of the corporation, or with a corporation’s legal status as a “person” (which is widely misunderstood and misrepresented anyway).
In re. #4, the ruling, of course, had nothing to do with the Court’s position on “ending an existing life” and reflects no judgment on the rightness or wrongness of the position taken by HL’s owners on the 4 methods of contraception of which they disapprove.
Basically, we should all be grateful that the Court issued a fundamentally liberal ruling that says that people should not be forced to pay for things which violate their consciences. Would that the same logic could be extended to the part of my tax dollars that go to the NSA, DoD, and anything to do with Homeland Security.
How anyone can possibly believe that forcing your employer to buy your contraceptives is consistent with a viewpoint like “keep your laws off my body” is beyond me. If you’re going to claim a legal rationale for that kind of mandate, you’re going to have to accept some restrictions and limitations imposed by lawmakers. It’s not a natural or absolute right.
#4 To me, it’s ending an existing life.
ugh, so the Church is wrong in its official position on this matter? Not even our Church believes an embryo is an existing life. You know the church has no issues whatsoever with IVF? And how did IVF ever come about you ask? On experiments with embryos. I get so frustrated with those in the Personhood Amendment movement because passing that would outlaw nearly all Assisted Reproductive Technologies.
I’ve been called a baby killer because in the process of our IVF cycle, we had to use experimental oocyte cryopreservation, and as a result only 1 of the 32 embryos survived. Do I think that I ended the life of 31 lives? No. I despise people making this so black and white.
My main issue on this matter is that no matter how narrow the justices made this ruling (ie this only applies in this case on these 4 types of birth control) it establishes precedent, and it’s not a legal precedent I’m a big fan of.
I’ve never ever heard of Hobby Lobby before (i’m Canadian) and don’t know why people can’t buy their own contraceptives
The idea behind the contraceptive mandate is that it will save money in a lot of ways. If women use contraceptives (a) they won’t have to use abortion, (b) they won’t have an expensive tax-payer funded pregnancy/delivery, (c) they won’t have to raise a child they didn’t want. Contraceptives are much less expensive than raising a child or having an abortion. There’s also a study that shows abortion may reduce crime and save jail space. Imagine using contraceptives instead of abortion! Maybe we can build fewer prisons. There’s also a study from St Louis University that found increased contraception lowers both abortion and unwanted pregnancies. Does Hobby Lobby have a moral objection to this? It seems like misplaced outrage, IMO.
Anyway, here’s a link about the Hobby Lobby case and what it means: http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/supreme-court-birth-control-what-hobby-lobby-ruling-means-n144526
I choose to put my hand on the hot stove; and demand that someone else pay for treatment of the burn.
Strikes me it’s so much more complicated to have employers fund healthcare than have the government do so.
#10 – re: abortion reducing crime. It seems rather frightening to in effect use “pre-crime” to condemn the unborn, especially MINORITIES, and this coming from a supposed liberal!
Hobby Lobby elects a corporate culture that reflects the Christian values of its primary stockholders. The decision to carry health insurance at all, and what services will or won’t be included, ought to remain a private decision of Hobby Lobby. Of course, we have marketplace prerogative, whether to support that decision or not with our business.
Obama and his ilk, however, don’t want us to have freedom to decide these matters for ourselves; they want to usurp that decision via Government fiat. It’s that intrusiveness that we ought to resent most and fight with all vigor.
#12 – WHAT complication? The marketplace tends to work out its own simplicity. The GOVERNMENT keep things simple? Witness the personal income tax code. When enacted in 1913, it occupied two volumes. Want to guess how large the library would have to be if we still printed it out nowadays? It’d make some printer and bookbind shop happy for sure!
markag: “I choose to put my hand on the hot stove; and demand that someone else pay for treatment of the burn.” You’re damn right you do. You demand that your insurer, that you PAY in advance for such events, will pay.
The only new legal ground broken by this case is (1) is a corporation a “person” for the purposes of the RFRA statute and (2) under what circumstances a corporation can be said to have religious beliefs that are protected by RFRA. And the court held (1) yes and (2) when the corporation is closely-held, because the religious beliefs really being protected are those of the owners.
That’s a decision with narrow application and little opportunity for precedential mischief.
Everything else in the decision is the application of already-existing legal principles to the specific facts at hand.
#2: Hobby Lobby pays for contraception. It’s owners just don’t want to pay for four specific contraceptives that they sincerely believe are abortifacients because they sincerely believe that abortion is immoral. If Hobby Lobby’s owners had a sincere religious objection to paying for vasectomies or Viagra, the case would have turned otu the same.
#3: None of tose questions are murky at all. Especially the one about tax liability, which is hilarious, because corporations are subject to double taxation on income.
#4: That has nothing to do with the ruling.
#5: Yes, under RFRA and the first amendment, your sincere religious beliefs are protected even if they are demonstrably false. And there are quite a few situations and circumstances where the corporate veil can be pierced, to a variety of effects. The Hobby Lobby decision is not actually an instance of corporate veil-piercing though.
#6: It doesn’t.
#7: Good comment.
#10: The utilitarianism of those arguments is truly chilling. I do not want to live in the world that they suggest.
#11: If you already paid them a premium to pay for it, then yes, you can. That’s how insurance works. It’s called “risk shifting.”
#14: Um, the tax code, when printed out, currently consists of two volumes. And that’s the entire federal tax code, not just the parts that relate to personal income tax, which takes up less than one volume. try again.
markag, you’re an idiot.
Kullervo’s responses to #2 and #5 bother me. Not because I don’t think they are accurate, but because I do think they are accurate, but have different implications. Specifically,
and
I see a lot of people saying that this case isn’t so bad because it’s just four kinds of contraception, and there are 16 more that even religious closely held corporations will cover. Notwithstanding the functional differences of different kinds of contraception, the reasoning of this case doesn’t necessarily apply only to the 4 kinds Hobby Lobby addressed specifically. There are other organizations opposing all forms of contraception, and as it’s based on their sincere religious beliefs, there’s nothing saying they won’t be protected.
The one alternative that seemed to be proposed in the court’s opinion and the concurring opinion was that organizations wanting such exemptions could file a form, which would mean that insurance cos would pay for the contraception (or charge the government for the cost). Which seemed like it might be a neat way to get around employer-provided healthcare here, especially since this is the course of action already in place for religious organizations (so it seems easy to also apply it to closely held corps here.)
…but it doesn’t seem like that alternative will work, since organizations are already protesting that that too violates their religious beliefs (i.e., filing a form that makes others provide contraception they oppose is materially participation in evil, to use a Catholic phrasing…)
However, I’m not so sure that just because the ruling is only for closely held corporations, that that means it’s going to all that narrow. This is an area I haven’t researched a whole lot. I mean, I theoretically like the idea that one imputes a corporations’ religious views based on the religious views of its concentration of owners. But, is closely held going by the tax definition (most relevantly, >50% of the value of the stock owned by 5 or fewer people)? Because I mean, even if Walmart is publicly traded, doesn’t the Walton family still own a majority of the value of the stock? (Or do they just maintain control through voting shares?)
I think it’s going to be narrow as a practical matter. There’s been a lot of commentary already asking what a closely held corporation means for the purposes of this opinion, but this is a Supreme Court legal opinion, not a federal regulation. Our legal tradition is pretty robust in the reasoning-by-analogy department.
I don’t know how many publicly traded companies are closely-held corporations for tax purposes (like Wal-Mart appears to be), but I suspect it’s not a lot. And the nature of publicly traded companies is such that their officers and directors are unlikely to try to make decisions based on sincerely held religious beliefs–at the very least, there’s a huge fiduciary duty problem if they do.
Notwithstanding the functional differences of different kinds of contraception, the reasoning of this case doesn’t necessarily apply only to the 4 kinds Hobby Lobby addressed specifically. There are other organizations opposing all forms of contraception, and as it’s based on their sincere religious beliefs, there’s nothing saying they won’t be protected.
As they should be. That’s what freedom of conscience is all about, and that’s the problem with government mandates. Someone’s ox is always gored in someone else’s interest, with little or no serious attention paid to alternative means of accomplishing the desired ends – because it’s not about accomplishing the ends, it’s about the exercise of power.
Anyway, very few if any publicly-traded corporations are closely held. Walmart is publicly traded, but not legally closely held. 50%+ of the outstanding stock is held by (many members of) the Walton family through a holding company; the rest is available on the open market. Kullervo makes a very good point – publicly-traded corporations are likely to be immune to this kind of decision-making by sheer market pressure. A company that did make such decisions would either see its board and corporate top-level management replaced by a shareholder revolt, or its stock would be de-listed as investors unloaded it.
There is no definition of “closely-held” other than that of the IRS: “a corporation that has more than 50% of the value of its outstanding stock directly or indirectly owned by five or fewer individuals at any time during the last half of the tax year.” That would be about 90% of US businesses, accounting for approximately 52% of US workers.
For those of you who think that this decision for Hobby Lobby is good, here are some things that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw as problematic in her dissent.
How many of you think religious freedom of employers trumps employees with regards to blood transfusions, anti-depressants, vaccinations, etc?
I have read Justice Ginsburg’s dissent and I do not find it compelling at all. Quite a few of her problems with the majority opinion boil down to “Oh, now I think that RFRA is a bad law, since it does something I don’t like,” and frankly that’s Congress’s job to decide, not hers.
The nature of RFRA is that the question has to be analyzed separately, every time. That’s not unique in American law either.
And let’s be clear, we’re not talking about the Constitutional right to religious freedom, we’re talking about a right created under a federal statute. The whole approach is different. With Constitutional rights we can and should get into big conceptual framework discussions: what is religious freedom, what are its limits, etc. With a statute we’re pretty much limited to “is this statute Constitutional,” “what does this statute mean,” and “how do we apply it to these facts.”
Ok kullwevo, but how do you like those specific cases?