Can Corporate-Americans Impose Their Morals on their Human-American Employees?

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SCOTUS accepted to hear the case.

[Th'Pusher]

LAW NOVEMBER 26, 2013
These Two Cases Could Be Corporate America's Biggest Gift Since Citizens United
BY JEFFREY ROSEN @rosenjeffrey Share


The Supreme Court today agreed to hear two cases involving the most hotly contested and far reaching question from the latest round of constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act: Do corporations have the same religious liberty rights as individuals? The cases arose out of the Obama administration's decision, under threat of litigation, from religious liberty groups like the Beckett Fund, to exempt churches, organized as non-profit corporations, from the ACA’s requirement that all businesses provide their employees with health insurance coverage related to contraception. Now the Beckett Fund and other scholars are arguing that the ACA’s exemption for religious non-profits is too narrow and that all corporations, profit and non-profit alike, should be able to claim an exemption from the contraception mandate because, according to the Citizens United case, corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals.


The case has huge significance because, if the broad version of the constitutional challenge is accepted, any for-profit corporations whose owners claim that they are organizing their businesses to further religious principles could claim exemption from a host of federal regulations. As Judge Illana Rovner pointed out in her dissent from the Seventh Circuit case granting a religious exemption to the health care mandate to for-profit corporations, a ruling along these lines “has the potential to reach far beyond contraception and to invite employers to seek exemptions from any number of federally-mandated employee benefits to which an employer might object on religious grounds.” For example, Judge Rovner noted, an employer who is a Methodist and objects to stem cell research might refuse to cover an employee’s participation in a clinical trial of stem cell research for Lou Gehrig’s disease; an employer who is a Christian scientist might insist that the ACA’s mandate of coverage for traditional medical care is a violation of his religious beliefs; and an employer who is a Southern Baptist and objects to gay marriage and surrogacy might refuse family leave to gay employees that would otherwise be required under federal law.


The question of whether corporations have the same religious liberty rights as individuals is both hugely significant and open-ended: As the Obama administration and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals have noted, before this litigation began, no court had found that “a for-profit, secular corporation” had the same First Amendment rights as individuals to the free exercise of religion.


Five federal circuit courts have now issued rulings on the constitutional challenges. The Seventh, Tenth, and D.C. Circuits have accepted the challenges, for different reason, and the Third and Sixth circuits have rejected the challenges. Several of the judges who have found that for-profit corporations profit have the same religious freedom rights as individuals have cited the court's Citizens United holding that corporations and individuals have the same First Amendment rights of free expression for the purposes of campaign finance law. For example, the majority in the Hobby Lobby case wrote that: “Because Hobby Lobby and Mardel express themselves for religious purposes, the First Amendment logic of Citizens United, where the Supreme Court has recognized a First Amendment right of for-profit corporations to express themselves for political purposes, applies as well.” Similarly, Judge Kent Jordan’s dissent in the Third Circuit cited Citizens United and dismissed the fact that there is no historical precedent for treating for profit corporations like individuals when it comes to the free exercise of religion. “While authority is admittedly scanty, that is in all probability because there has never before been a government policy that could be perceived as intruding on religious liberty as aggressively as the Mandate, so there has been little reason to address the issue,” he wrote.


"By contrast, those judges who have rejected the constitutional claim argue that “Citizens United represents the culmination of decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence recognizing that all corporations speak,” as the libertarian conservative Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “When it comes to the free exercise of religion, however, the Court has only indicated that people and churches worship. As for secular corporations, the Court has been all but silent.”


In a recent podcast debate hosted by the National Constitution Center, Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School and David Gans of the Constitutional Accountability Center drew opposite conclusions from constitutional history about whether corporations have the same religious liberty rights as individuals. Citing McConnell’s historical scholarship, Gans argued in the podcast and his brief to the Supreme Court that “the Founding generation well understood that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise was an inalienable individual right, inextricably linked to the human capacity to express devotion to a god and act on the basis of reason and conscience.” He also emphasized that English common law during the Founding generation sharply distinguished between religious and other private corporations. In his response, McConnell emphasized that the modern business corporation didn’t exist at the time of the Founding, that it wasn’t until the 1840s that ordinary people were able to organize their businesses in corporate form, and no one thought the precise corporate organization of an entity—for profit or non-profit, corporation or sole proprietorship—deprived its owner of constitutional rights. McConnell’s arguments are amplified in this comprehensive scholarly argument by Mark Rienzi of the Beckett Fund that denying religious liberty rights to for profit corporations would single them out for discriminatory treatment in ways that the First Amendment forbids.


There are good arguments on both sides of this case, as there are on any important Supreme Court case of first impression. But it’s clear that the Obama administration has history, Supreme Court precedent, and judicial restraint on its side, while those who are demanding a broad exemption from the contraceptive mandate for all religiously motivated employers are offering a novel argument, not previously raised before this litigation began, that could indeed lead religiously motivated employers to demand exemptions from a broad range of anti-discriminatory, health, and safety laws. “By casting the mandatory provision of benefits to an employee as a substantial burden on the free exercise rights of a closely-held corporation and its owners, without considering whether compliance with the mandate directly interferes with the free exercise of religion or is at most a modest burden on a plaintiff’s free exercise rights, the court’s rationale subjects a potentially wide range of statutory protections to strict scrutiny, one of the most demanding standards known in our legal system,” Judge Rovner wrote in her Seventh Circuit dissent. “In some ways, this is reminiscent of the Lochner era, when an employer could claim that the extension of statutory protections to its workers constituted an undue infringement on the freedom of contract and the right to operate a private, lawful business as the owner wished.”


If the Supreme Court wants to avoid the most explosive implications of a holding that corporations have the same religious liberty rights as individuals, it might instead take the narrower approach of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which held that individual businesses owners who are religiously motivated can challenge the contraceptive mandate but a corporate as a whole cannot. That would still leave open the central question of whether or not an obligation to provide contraceptive coverage does, in fact, burden the religious liberty rights of the individual business owners. And on that score, Judge Harry Edward on the D.C. Circuit had the most convincing take. While acknowledging that individual business owners, Frances and Phil Gilardi, owners of the Freshway corporation, could challenge the health care mandate, he noted three reasons why the mandate doesn’t substantially burden the business owner’s religious liberty: “First, the Mandate does not require the Gilardis to use or purchase contraception themselves. Second, the Mandate does not require the Gilardis to encourage Freshway’s employees to use contraceptives any more directly than they do by authorizing Freshway to pay wages. Finally, the Gilardis remain free to express publicly their disapproval of contraceptive products.” Because the business owners weren’t forced by the government personally to engage in conduct that their religious beliefs prohibit, Edwards concluded, “this case differs from every case in which the Court has found a substantial burden on religious exercise.”


And that’s the nub of the issue. The question of whether or not corporations have the same constitutional rights of religious liberty as individuals is legally significant, politically explosive, and has huge consequences for the future of the regulatory state. But even if the Court holds that corporations can’t challenge the mandate in their collective capacity but individual business owners can, the underlying question is whether the religious liberty of for-profit business owners is actually burdened by a federal requirement that they give their employees access to federal benefits on the same terms available to employees of any other business. If the Court says yes, and allows religiously motivated corporations to claim exemptions from otherwise neutral federal regulations, it could not only drive a stake into the heart of the regulatory state; it could also balkanize Americans based on their place of employment in ways that are hard to reconcile with the Founders’ vision that all employees and all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115751/obamacares-contraception-mandate-will-be-challenged-suprem

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I will not be surprised at 5-4, packed-court JINO pro-Corporate-American right-wing extremists screwing Human-Americans over once again.

That slope is very slippery, and will encourage the traitorous Christian Taleban to push harder to create a theocracy

[boutons_deux]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/themes/blognewsv131/images/panic-in-funland-logo-650.png

‘Hobby Lobby’ Is Not Slang For ‘Vagina’ – A Guide For Guys

You lead a busy life. When you’re not wasting time at work, bip-bopping around the internet checking out ESPN.com or looking at pictures of hot actresses without their make-up and wondering if you’d still ‘do’ them, you still make time to do your real job: whether it is processing an insurance claim or finally answering that annoying 911 emergency call.
You can’t be expected to know everything that is going on in the world, which is why we’re here to help.

Today you are probably wondering: ‘what is up with this #hobbylobby thing?’ That is why we are here; to explain stuff so you can boldly go into the world fully armed with opinions about ‘things that are going on.’

So let’s get started:

What, exactly, is a Hobby Lobby?

Hobby Lobby is a craft store chain with a Christian bent, mostly located in SmallTown, America, which sells glue guns, glitter, fake flowers, scrap-booking supplies, ironic hipster Jesus t-shirts (http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/ss16-light-siam-hot-fix-crystals-118588/), and cheap Chinese bric-a-brac to Americans who are killing the hours until the End Times arrive ….. which should be any minute now.

Why are they in the news?

The owners, who are more Jesus-y than Jesus, have a small problem with the part of the Affordable Care Act that says that their employees should get a full array of contraceptive choices in their company insurance plan. Specifically, they have a real hard-on for the ‘Morning After Pill’ which they regard as ‘abortion in a pill’ because a truly righteous women would already be on the pill, and anyone who needs Plan B is obviously a impulsive cock-monster whore who can’t control her libido (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/23/huckabee-dems-keep-ladies-in-their-voter-harem-by-feeding-their-whore-pill-addiction/) after a pitcher or two of mango sangria at Applebees.

Presumably Hobby Lobby doesn’t want their mainly female workforce to be coming in late to work every morning because they had to stop at the drugstore for an abortion pill and a Twix bar. Anyway, the owners of Hobby Lobby took their complaint to the Supreme Court to get them to make the government stop compelling them to shove abortion pills down their employee’s throats.

Is Plan B really an abortion pill?

No. However Chief Justice John Roberts said that the belief that something is an abortion is enough to allow an religious exemption to federal law. So, if you believe it, it is true. This is what is known in legal circles as “The Orly Taitz Rationale.” :lol

Why is the Supreme Court involved?

It’s a Freedom of Speech/Religion thing and the Hobby Lobby people point to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which says that the federal government cannot burden their religious liberty to keep their employees from being sluts.

Do any other companies feel this way?

Conestoga Wood Specialties is in court too, but nobody pays attention to them because their name doesn’t rhyme. If they were ‘Conestoga Yoga,’ they would probably get a lot more play because people would wonder what positions our plucky pioneering ancestors used when opening up this great country of ours. Instead, they make kitchen cabinets.

That is so boring.

So this is all about religion, right?

Ostensibly, yes. Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible tell them that Jesus thinks that birth control and abortion are ‘non-starters’ although He never says that in so many words. There are hard and fast rules about mixing fabrics and eating shrimp, but not so much about slut pills and IUD’s. Calls from the Supreme Court to Jesus to discuss ‘original intent’ are not being returned. As usual…

What is Hobby Lobby’s argument?

People who support Hobby Lobby generally believe that the government should not be in the business of compelling anyone, including insurance companies, to provide contraceptive care to women. They don’t believe that sexual health is a medical issue and what this is really all about is women wanting to have no-consequence sex. Therefore, their argument boils down to: I don’t want to pay for your birth control pills either through my tax dollars or as part of the pool of money through which all insurance companies cover costs.

Also: you are a whore and isn’t it enough that I have to pay for your STD treatments, you disease-ridden skank?

Sometimes they’re not even that nice…

Do they also feel this way about Viagra?

According to Twitchy (http://twitchy.com/2014/03/25/pathological-ignorance-sen-boxers-hobby-lobby-strawmen-need-viagra-to-stand-up-video/), we are not allowed to talk about Viagra coverage, so let’s the leave the four-hour boners out of it.

That doesn’t seem fair.

It’s not, but you’re probably thinking with your dick.

Are there any other reasons people don’t like the contraceptive mandate?

Yeah. The president is a black guy. :lol

Is there anything else I should know about the case against the mandate?

What is also at stake here, in light of Citizens United, would be a far-reaching decision whether corporations are not only a person, but are also a religious person whose personal religious beliefs trump those of their employees.

That doesn’t sound good.

It’s not.

So, how’d it go in court?

Well the lady justices – Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg (http://time.com/37055/supreme-court-women-dominate-arguments-on-contraception-coverage/) – are pretty hard core in the ‘your religion does not trump my physical health’ camp, but they’ll probably be accused of thinking with their lady-parts and not their lady smarts’ because, you know….women.

Stephen Breyer is kind of waffling around and trying to not offend anyone as usual.

Thomas and Strip Search Sammy Alito are always predicable pro-Jesus, anti-women votes.

Scalia is still the Honey Badger of Constitutional law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg): he doesn’t give a shit, he’ll trample and shred precedent, even if it is his own (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/antonin-scalia-past-haunt-him-on-birth-control).

Chief Justice John Roberts is doing his constipated face again, trying to straddle the line between law and his personal beliefs, and hopefully suggesting a delineation between “closely held corporations and public-traded ones” when it comes to the religious personhood of companies.

As the Dahlia Lithwick (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2014/03/sebelius_v_hobby_lobby_supreme_court_hears_oral_ar guments_in_the_contraception.2.html) put it:

The rights of millions of women to preventive health care and workplace equality elicit almost no sign of sympathy or solicitude from the right wing of the bench today.

Nor does the possibility that religious conscience objections may soon swallow up the civil rights laws protecting gay workers, women, and other minorities.

Religious freedom trumps because we’re “only” talking about birth control.


Shit. It’s going to come down to Anthony Kennedy again, isn’t it?

Of course. Keep in mind that Kennedy is a 77-year-old Catholic. When he was in his sexual prime, the female orgasm and homosexuality hadn’t even been invented yet. Kennedy, is forever called the ‘swing vote’ which is stupid since he’s pretty much a conservative straight down the line. So, not looking good.

So, what does this mean for women?

They’re screwed. And not in the fun non-procreational hot ‘n sweaty laughing-after-simultaneous-orgasm way.

That sucks.

Yup.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/26/hobby-lobby-is-not-slang-for-vagina-a-guide-for-guys/

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4 really important things you should know about the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case


1. Hobby Lobby built its case on an extreme interpretation of medically refuted pseudo-science.

2. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was created to protect the little guy — not corporations.

3. The business community isn’t rooting for Hobby Lobby to win this one.

4. Corporate religion will be really bad news for basically everyone who isn’t a business owner with a self-interested ax to grind.

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/25/4_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_hobby_lobby_sc otus_case/

[angrydude]

Liberals don't like Scalia because he is articulate at expressing arguments they don't like. This flies in the face of the "conservatives are dumb" meme they circulate. If he wrote boring dissents nobody would care about him.

[Th'Pusher]

Liberals don't like Scalia because he is articulate at expressing arguments they don't like. This flies in the face of the "conservatives are dumb" meme they circulate. If he wrote boring dissents nobody would care about him.

"To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself," - Scalia in Smith case

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Liberals don't like Scalia because he is articulate at expressing arguments they don't like. This flies in the face of the "conservatives are dumb" meme they circulate. If he wrote boring dissents nobody would care about him.

honey badger scalia and the other 4 extreme right wing activist SCOTUS assholes are not "liked" by intelligent people because they are pro-corporate/pro-1% and aggressively anti-Human-American.