Quote :

"it doesn't seem like an employer should have any say in this. They just pay for it"

Yeah, all they're doing is paying for the plan, why should they have any input on what the plan provides.

6/30/2014 2:29:06 PM

Hobby Lobby paid for it for years and never complained before

Hobby Lobby also pays these workers salaries, should Hobby lobby have a say on what they spend it on?

6/30/2014 2:31:33 PM

^^so you agree that they should be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on their employees?

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 2:33 PM. Reason : they also allow vasectomies through their coverage]

6/30/2014 2:32:18 PM

Only in the most extreme of leftist fantasies does failing to pay for something equate to "imposing religious beliefs".

6/30/2014 2:48:19 PM

Quote :

"plenty of people cannot opt out of their benefits, and even if they could whats the point? its not like theyre going to give you a bigger paycheck because you did so."

Seems like fixing this would be a better use of government rather than trampling over individual rights. I have no objections to a law stating that if health care benefits are part of your nominal compensation and you opt out of the benefits provided by your company that they must pay you the benefit cost in wages.

Quote :

"Hobby Lobby also pays these workers salaries, should Hobby lobby have a say on what they spend it on?"

Paying you a salary for doing something is different than buying you something. If your job came with a company car, and you company's owners didn't like buying foreign cars, you would have no right to demand that they buy you a BMW instead of the Chevy.

6/30/2014 2:49:50 PM

Quote :

"Only in the most extreme of leftist fantasies does failing to pay for something equate to "imposing religious beliefs"."

or, you know, the reality where paying for that thing is a legal requirement

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 3:01 PM. Reason : ^not legally required to buy a car]

6/30/2014 3:01:38 PM

^ Which is of course why this made it to the supreme court in the first place. Because the government took it upon itself to mandate companies to buy certain insurances and provide them to their employees. Nothing about this ruling prevents the employees from buying whatever insurance they want, and nothing in the ruling allows Hobby Lobby to fire employees for buying whatever insurance they want. All it does is note that the federal government clearly doesn't believe they have an overwhelming health interest here (they give exemptions to religious institutions) and that they didn't accomplish their goal in the least intrusive way, therefore, certain corporations (closely held) may be exempt from certain requirements due to closely held religious beliefs.

6/30/2014 3:10:13 PM

^^^ Well, yeah, except for the fact that most company cars are actually owned by the company, whereas health insurance is more akin to an in-kind wage.

I'm not familiar with the health care plans Hobby Lobby provides (other than the contraceptive coverage is weak), but I would guess that, like most other employers, the plans are not without out-of-pocket expenses to the employees.

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 3:16 PM. Reason : ^^^]

6/30/2014 3:16:32 PM

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 3:17 PM. Reason : double poste]

6/30/2014 3:16:32 PM

Quote :

"Well, yeah, except for the fact that most company cars are actually owned by the company, whereas health insurance is more akin to an in-kind wage."

Even if you owned the car, you still wouldn't have standing to require them to buy you a BMW. The problem with asking other people to buy you things is that they get to determine what they're buying. The answer to this solution isn't to force Hobby Lobby to buy something they don't want to buy, but to make it easier for people to buy the things they do want to buy. Of course, that would have required that the health care law actually be able reducing health care costs.

6/30/2014 3:44:25 PM

and it's based on religion

6/30/2014 4:01:16 PM

^^you are arguing that ACA is wrong, but ACA has been upheld

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 4:01 PM. Reason : .]

6/30/2014 4:01:24 PM

It's the corporation trampling individual rights in this case. This isn't actually an issue of cost, that should be obvious. Your comparison to wanting a bmw or not doesn't make sense. It's more like wanting a red car vs a green car, but the company hates the color red, so they force you to try and like the color they like.

What's trampling rights is the corporation using religion to demand the ability to create a work environment promoting 1 belief system. It would be great if you could opt for a stipend but there are other market forces that make this less desirable than a group purchase. In the absence of this choice, the employer is using their power to call employees wanting what has been socially acceptable birth control methods murderers, and they are stepping between employees and healthcare providers to make this choice.

Ginsburg covered some good points here:
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/best-lines-hobby-lobby-decision

The conservative wing of the current Supreme Court is extremely pro-corporation, anti We-the-people and I guess we should just bend over until one of then ages out, and hope a sensible choice is made.

6/30/2014 4:04:50 PM

Quote :

"you are arguing that ACA is wrong, but ACA has been upheld"

That a bad law was upheld doesn't mean we should uphold other bad laws. The government created this issue, and they should not be allowed to run roughshod over individual rights just because it's now an issue.

Quote :

"It's more like wanting a red car vs a green car, but the company hates the color red, so they force you to try and like the color they like. "

The point would remain the same. If the only car your company will buy you is green, you have no right to demand they buy you a red car. If you want a red car, buy it with your own money. No one is being forced to like the color green, and no one is being forced to not have the contraceptives of their choice.

Quote :

" In the absence of this choice, the employer is using their power to call employees wanting what has been socially acceptable birth control methods murderers, and they are stepping between employees and healthcare providers to make this choice."

1) An employer can call their employees whatever they want, and employees are free to leave.
2) No employee is being denied access to whatever contraceptives they want. Their employer however is declining to purchase it for them.

Quote :

"The conservative wing of the current Supreme Court is extremely pro-corporation, anti We-the-people and I guess we should just bend over until one of then ages out, and hope a sensible choice is made."

So does exercising your right to assembly require you to surrender your right to religion and speech?

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 4:39 PM. Reason : sad]

6/30/2014 4:38:03 PM

Quote :

"and no one is being forced to not have the contraceptives of their choice."

they are being forced to not have insurance coverage for something that was legally mandated because of religious beliefs that they do not hold themselves

6/30/2014 5:01:30 PM

the morning after pill is like 20 bucks without insurance.

6/30/2014 5:04:25 PM

try to guess which was written by Justice Alito and which is by Pope Paul VI

first passage:

Quote :

"Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it."

second passage

Quote :

"The belief... implicates a difficult and im-portant question of religion and moral philosophy, namely, the circumstances under which it is immoral for a person to perform an actthat is innocent in itself but that has the effect of enabling or facili-tating the commission of an immoral act by another."

6/30/2014 5:10:56 PM

so i used to be able to get free condoms is that what this is about

6/30/2014 5:31:26 PM

Quote :

"they are being forced to not have insurance coverage for something that was legally mandated because of religious beliefs that they do not hold themselves"

The alternative was to force people who did hold a religious belief to directly pay for a service which violated that religious belief. Given that the government already makes this same exact exception for other religious believers, there is no legal justification for the government to deny the exception to these believers simply because their form of association is different. Hence the conclusion reached by the supreme court.

6/30/2014 5:45:02 PM

Quote :

"So does exercising your right to assembly require you to surrender your right to religion and speech?"

There is a huge difference between an assembly of people and an "S" corporation, which Hobby Lobby is. "S" Corporations are an entity of the state, Hobby Lobby would not exist in its current form (at least legally speaking) if the government hadn't created it with tax law. You are piercing the corporate veil but only in one direction. We should be careful here, when corporations suddenly start having religion or becoming people, shouldn't they also be losing their limited liability, their preferred tax status, etc? The fact that they are an entity of the state, and not a natural entity, suggests that the state can require or put whatever burdens they want on that specific entity (or else not enjoy the benefits of that state created status).

6/30/2014 6:03:25 PM

Quote :

"Given that the government already makes this same exact exception for other religious believers, there is no legal justification for the government to deny the exception to these believers simply because their form of association is different. Hence the conclusion reached by the supreme court."

1. the exemption to churches is explicitly listed in the ACA, it is not an exemption for "believers" it is an exemption for specific organizations. Hobby Lobby previously covered these kinds of birth control in their insurance plan and were not included in this ACA exemption.

2. This is not "hence the conclusion reached"; the majority opinion is based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and not drawing equivalents to excluded groups in the ACA. The RFRA limits legislation that "substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion."

those above items are the facts, your post is incorrect. it is my opinion, and was the courts minority opinion, that requiring your health insurance company to pay for birth control does not substantially burden any person't exercise of religion. you can debate about that if you would like, but the argument you are trying to make doesn't make sense and has nothing to do with the decision of this case.

6/30/2014 6:04:54 PM

Our country is fucking ridiculous. Founded as the first real secular state where everyone can come and worship as they please or not please and now we're a de facto Christian state.

One of the only countries in the world without an official state religion but we have our children pledging to the Christian god every fucking morning in public school, Christian prayers said at every public meeting, bigoted Christian laws written into our books.

it would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetically sad.

6/30/2014 8:20:47 PM

Just quit your job at Hobby Lobby and get one with Planned Parenthood. They probably promote free abortions for their employees.

And it isn't like women aren't going to be able to get free contraception. For those already on assistance, I'm sure the government will add a stipend to the EBT cards for contraception. For those not on assistance, maybe the government can provide an add-on policy that is heavily subsidized that one could purchase for a few dollars a month.

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 10:03 PM. Reason : asdf]

6/30/2014 9:47:28 PM

So conservatives are on board with a public option now. Cool.

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 10:15 PM. Reason : and government assistance ]

6/30/2014 10:07:50 PM

Who said I'm on board with it. Just like everything else, this administration will find a way to skirt around their decision.

My girlfriend in high school was able to go to the county health department and get birth control for virtually nothing. If she could do it, why can't everybody else that doesn't have access to it through their employer?

6/30/2014 10:17:05 PM

I just want to point out that I've been arguing for OTC sale of birth control since forever.

Prior to a recently enacted law there was no requirement for Hobby Lobby to provide insurance that covered birth control. Then they were legally mandated to do so. The private ownership of this company argued that as a company founded with certain principals it would violate their individual rights to be forced to provide something they felt was immoral.

Small corporations which have minority or female ownership have been able to bring discrimination suits based on the very fact that they are owned by a minority and have been afforded protections based on the ethnicity, gender, etc. of the individuals behind the corporation. Extending that protection to include religion is not much of a stretch.

Now, as wrongheaded as their beliefs are, the folks who own Hobby Lobby are allowed to have them and are legally protected from being forced to do something which violates said beliefs.

This ruling was incredibly narrow, it doesn't let GM, Exxon, or other publicly traded companies ignore the law.

Furthermore, the assertion that somehow people are having their access to a legal, readily available product by this decision is laughable. Not forcing someone else to pay for something is not the same as preventing you from purchasing it.

It was the correct decision based on logical interpretation of the law and it's not going to be the model for anyone to just poo poo any law they want and claim religious exemption.

6/30/2014 10:23:20 PM

Quote :

"1. the exemption to churches is explicitly listed in the ACA, it is not an exemption for "believers" it is an exemption for specific organizations. Hobby Lobby previously covered these kinds of birth control in their insurance plan and were not included in this ACA exemption. 2. This is not "hence the conclusion reached"; the majority opinion is based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and not drawing equivalents to excluded groups in the ACA. The RFRA limits legislation that "substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion." "

1) And the exemption is granted to those organizations because ... of their religious beliefs.

2) The RFRA requires that the legislation accomplish its goal in the least restrictive way possible. Since the law has built in exceptions for certain organizations based on their religious convictions, requiring other organizations with the same religious convictions is not the least restrictive way. This is evidenced by the fact that the government specifically set up other avenues to accomplish the same goal for those exempted organizations.

Quote :

"Our country is fucking ridiculous. Founded as the first real secular state where everyone can come and worship as they please or not please and now we're a de facto Christian state."

How is allowing people to organize and conduct their businesses according to their religious beliefs a repudiation of the idea that "everyone can come and worship as they please"? Would you create a second class of citizens, who are not able to exercise their rights to assembly without first giving up their religious beliefs? If the government instituted the "affordable food act" tomorrow, mandating that every employer provide their employees with a months worth of food each month, would you require that Muslim businesses supply alcohol? Would you mandate that the Jewish businesses provide pork? That the Hindu businesses provide beef? How is that a nation where "everyone can come and worship as they please"?

6/30/2014 10:32:14 PM

Quote :

"Extending that protection to include religion is not much of a stretch."

Only in bizarro world would superstition be afforded protection.

Quote :

"If the government instituted the "affordable food act" tomorrow, mandating that every employer provide their employees with a months worth of food each month, would you require that Muslim businesses supply alcohol? Would you mandate that the Jewish businesses provide pork? That the Hindu businesses provide beef? "?"

Businesses aren't providing contraception. They are facilitating the acquisition of contraception. Would you be in favor of Hindu businesses specifically making it more difficult for their non-Hindu workers to acquire beef generally? Is manipulating the lives of other people that believe different than you a protection religion deserves?

This is bolded because it works as a response to V.

[Edited on June 30, 2014 at 11:06 PM. Reason : V]

6/30/2014 10:56:44 PM

Quote :

"Only in bizarro world would superstition be afforded protection."

Just to be clear, you were exactly one post prior lamenting how this once "real secular state where everyone can come and worship as they please" is no more, and now you think that only in a bizarro world should people's ability to "come and worship as they please" be afforded protection.

6/30/2014 11:03:39 PM

Quote :

"Since the law has built in exceptions for certain organizations based on their religious convictions, requiring other organizations with the same religious convictions is not the least restrictive way"

Hobby Lobby's insurance covered birth control until they wanted to stick it to Obama and fight the ACA. Since they previously covered birth control, then it is not a substantial burden on their freedom to practice religion. If allowing their insurance company to cover birth control was a burden on their religion, they would not have covered it previously before ACA.

7/1/2014 7:19:44 AM

The act of abstaining from the practice of your religion should not impact the statutory requirements the government must meet. Consider the case which generated the RFRA in the first place. If those employees had previously abstained from using Peyote and had only recently begun so does that eliminate their protections? Similarly, plenty of lawsuits have been brought by people who are (and have in the past) complied with a law, but still argue being "substantially burdened" by the law in question. The SCOTUS previously had ruled against exempting people from generally applicable and religiously neutral laws due to religious beliefs. As a result of that, congress passed the RFRA (97-3 in the senate) into law, explicitly to allow people to challenge the applicability and require the government to engage in the "lease restrictive" law making. Given the act was passed and your specific arguments against its effects were argued by the SCOTUS previously, it should be unsurprising to anyone that this case ended the way it did. It's exactly what congress intended when they passed the law and then proceeded to carve out exceptions to laws for religious organizations.

Again, if congress passed the "affordable food act" tomorrow, would you require muslim business to provide their employees alcohol? Would you require Jews to provide their employees pork? Would you require the Hindu's to provide their employees beef? Even if those same companies had previously had company cookouts and provided such food for their non-religious employees? Must every religious person now be fanatically devoted to their religion, to the point of not accommodating people not of their religion, so that if congress ever passes a law that infringes on their religious freedoms they can have moral standing in your eyes?

Now we could argue that the RFRA needs to be repealed. Or you could argue that the courts should be in the business of evaluating the depth of religious convictions. But under the laws as written and passed by congress (and especially given the context of passing that law) it's pretty clear this decision was the right one legally.

[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 9:27 AM. Reason : asdf]

7/1/2014 9:23:49 AM

you have RFRA backwards, RFRA is based on the Sherbert test which is an if-then

First action:
determne whether the person has a claim involving sincere religious belief
whether the government action is a substantial burden on the person's ability to act on that belief

if both of those are met, only then must the government prove:
that it is acting in furtherance of a "compelling state interest," and
that it has persued that interest in the least restrictive manner

Requiring a private health insurance to cover birth control, and requiring a private employer who was already been paying for that coverage previously to continue to pay for it, does not place a substantial burden on that person's ability to act on their belief.

Since there is not a substantial burden, the government has no obligation to show that this was the least restrictive manner

(I also contend that their belief is not sincere, due to the fact that they didn't care about it befor ACA, but I will concede this point because it doesn't even matter)

[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 10:14 AM. Reason : not sincere belief]

7/1/2014 10:12:36 AM

^^again, the companies aren't providing contraceptives.

Would you think a Muslim company should be able to go out of its way to make it harder for its non-Mulsim employees to acquire alcohol?

7/1/2014 10:22:03 AM

muslim-owned companies (and jewish, and hindu owned companies) may now change their health insurance to not cover certain gelatin pills.

the company i previously worked at was owned by a christian scientist who is now allowed to tell their insurance provider to not cover vacccinations or mental health care

[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 10:30 AM. Reason : previous job]

7/1/2014 10:28:58 AM

Quote :

"The point would remain the same. If the only car your company will buy you is green, you have no right to demand they buy you a red car. If you want a red car, buy it with your own money. No one is being forced to like the color green, and no one is being forced to not have the contraceptives of their choice. "

This car analogy doesn't seem to hold up well, but if red cars and green cars were readily available, socially acceptable, and ruled legal for decades by court rulings, primarily used by women, and conveyed health benefits to women, it would certainly be discriminatory to say no red cars.

And insurance isn't like cars, it's an incentive companies offer by using their clout to negotiate a lower rate than the private market, to replace private health insurance. It should't be viewed as different from buying your own healthcare. It's not a favor the gracious and magnanimous companies are offering.

If I were an employee of this company, i'd sue them for changing my healthcare.

I could see if the ACA were actually preventing or restricting religious groups from doing something, or if it banned something, the companies would have a point, but this is not what's happening. If ACA said that injuries from snake handling during church weren't covered, or for accidents during a baptism, the company would definitely have a point.

But this is probably the worst supreme court ruling in our lifetimes, where religion can trump law, when the law isn't even restricting or hindering the practice of religion.

If anything paves the way for shariah law by muslims in the US, it will be this ruling.

[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 10:45 AM. Reason : ]

7/1/2014 10:33:35 AM

Native American groups should immediately start filing lawsuits to prevent development and pipelines on their religious places

Actually, thinking about Native Americans reminded me of this awesome piece of hypocrisy and religious preference:

Justice Antonin Scalia, in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), said using a religious exemption in conflict of a valid law “would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.”


[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 10:39 AM. Reason : .]

7/1/2014 10:35:28 AM

How does the government even measure "sincerely held religious beliefs"? How does this company claim their belief is sincere, but they've been offering the coverage?

7/1/2014 10:39:30 AM

if you think its bad now, wait for a court case where two beliefs conflict with each other and the court gets to decide which religion to prefer.

7/1/2014 10:42:58 AM

At least people corporations can hold religious beliefs and force others to follow those beliefs now. I was worried that corporations weren't praying to the right god.

7/1/2014 10:45:19 AM

I just wish all of the news headlines and leftist politicians would stop horribly twisting the facts. This case does not ban contraceptives in these companies. There are 4 that companies cannot offer. 2 are the morning after pills, and 2 are IUD's.

I don't really follow the IUD logic though. They say that it prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. To me, that is not far from a condom preventing sperm from coming in contact with an egg. I guess to them the point here is conception.

7/1/2014 10:46:17 AM

Quote :

". This case does not ban contraceptives in these companies. There are 4 that companies cannot offer. 2 are the morning after pills, and 2 are IUD's. "

That's only for this company.

If a company could come up with a "sincere religious objection" they could ban anything they want.

7/1/2014 10:48:02 AM

Slippery slope indeed

7/1/2014 10:56:08 AM

the key thing is this case drastically reduces the bar for what constitutes a substantial burden in regards ro RFRA

7/1/2014 10:57:37 AM

^i think it also extends RFRA to corporations for the first time.

7/1/2014 11:29:36 AM

I can't wait for SCOTUS to tell us what else companies can force on you via your compensation package.

7/1/2014 11:46:38 AM

At least my vasectomy would still be covered Hobby Lobby insurance. Phew.

7/1/2014 11:58:18 AM

did anyone have a guess without googling?:

try to guess which was written by Justice Alito and which is by Pope Paul VI

first passage:

Quote :

"Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it."

second passage

Quote :

"The belief... implicates a difficult and im-portant question of religion and moral philosophy, namely, the circumstances under which it is immoral for a person to perform an actthat is innocent in itself but that has the effect of enabling or facili-tating the commission of an immoral act by another."

7/1/2014 12:01:57 PM

What if a company was owned by a Jew who strictly observed the mitvot, and was strongly opposed to driving on the Sabbath, and therefore wanted to prohibit insurance covering any medical procedures on the sabbath unless it's a life or death situation, and therefore any urgent care visits for your baby on Saturday wouldn't be covered by insurance?

Or a baptist owner who wanted to prohibit using medical insurance to treat any complications that arose from alcohol or tobacco consumption?

Or a muslim owner who wanted to prohibit using medical insurance to treat rape victims, if they had it coming (like they were around men or weren't wearing a burqa)? Or prohibit the treatment of trichinosis?

Or a die-hard paleo tree-hugging health-nut who practiced the religion of healthy-living who wanted to prohibit insurance from covering any medical complications that arose from unhealthy living?

Shomer Shabbos! Slipper slope, not sure how you can defend this.

[Edited on July 1, 2014 at 12:21 PM. Reason : ]

7/1/2014 12:09:42 PM

Don't forget the Scientologist who wouldn't allow insurance to cover psychiatric medication for his/her employees.

7/1/2014 12:34:59 PM

Ah well, if nothing else, this ruling is a reminder that Presidential elections do matter and there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans.

7/1/2014 1:16:06 PM