The federal court hearing Hobby Lobby’s case just granted an order excusing Hobby Lobby from compliance with the mandate.
U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton ruled that Hobby Lobby and the affiliated Mardel Christian bookstore chain are exempt from having to comply with the mandate until the litigation is settled.
Maybe now we can scrap the ACA and get single payer health care passed. Employer supplied health insurance is a terrible model. And I say this as an employer that pays 100% of health insurance costs for over 10 employees.
This is just a temporary injunction so the fines stop piling up and they aren’t currently forced to provide the health care option, correct? It’s not like Hobby Lobby has won an exemption.
Well, at the very least, they’ve earned an exception from the fines.
My point being – if this were a factory dumping toxic waste into the public pool, they wouldn’t be exempted from fines while we figured out if what they were doing was wrong … as explicitly laid out by law.
Correct – although the Tenth Circuit’s en banc decision a couple of weeks ago isn’t good news for the administration on that front.
Their claim is that the law impermissibly intrudes on to freedoms granted by the First Amendment. It’s reasonably well-settled law that there’s no First Amendment interest in dumping toxic waste.
But there IS a First Amendment interest in not provide certain contraceptive services as a part of their employer-sponsored health care plan.
This is probably why the “toxic waste” defense failed to move the Tenth Circuit.
I was obviously being hyperbolic, but the point still stands, first amendment or not. They decided they didn’t want to follow the law, propping up the first amendment as a shield. I can’t drive 120 mph anywhere I want to go and call it free expression.
If they want to break the law, then they should be held accountable. If they can strong-arm the federal government into giving them special rights (you know, different than any other non-Christian businesses just like them), they can discuss the fines they had to pay then.
That’s true, but the courts are permitted to make threshold determinations of what is, and is not, a bonafide religious practice. I doubt you’re attending the Church of Sammy “I Can’t Drive 55” Hagar, and the government is not required to credulously accept any claim that any practice is religious.
Nope. That’s not the law. The law says that they have a right to enjoin enforcement of the fines, in advance, if they can demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of success in ultimately winning their case. And they did.
Your method would chill the ability to challenge such laws, because a business, even one with a strongly meritorious claim, couldn’t afford to pay the fines while awaiting their turn in court.
So good thing your method is NOT the one we use, eh?
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear their case.
If the Court rules that the First Amendment shields their conduct, then they didn’t “break the law.”
Right?
Are you saying that breaking an unconstitutional law is not breaking a law before it’s deemed to be unconstitutional?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d be gunning for a constitutional amendment toot suite.
I hear ya.
[Quote=Amendment XXVIII]
Section 1. No laws shall be deemed to protect Hobby Lobby from anything, because they suck.
Section 2. The president shall have power to enforce this through appropriate military means.
[/quote]
Yes?? 
This. I’ve had a belly full of all the “a company is a person with rights” and by extension “a company is a person with religious rights that allow it to FVCK its employees in the name of Gawd”.
The LAW says, not to use the company to force some CEO or owner’s religious crap on the employees. The law does NOT say make employees obey your personal version fo some Big Book. The law says the boss’ religion does not entitle him do arbitrarily decide what benefits he feels like “granting”.
The company can obey the law, or pay fines and lawsuits, or go under.
I was thinking something a bit more general that would say, allow people to still have real healthcare should their boss become a christian scientist or something, but your version has a certain je ne sai quoi.
Not exactly. I’m parroting back an often-heard theory here: courts don’t make law, they just discover the correct law that was there all along.
But the Supreme Court decides what the law says, not you. What if they decide that you’re full of crap as far as your view of how this law interacts with the First Amendment?
Isn’t it then you who are failing to obey the law – or more specifically, urging a course of action that violates the law?
Does that irritation extend to Orthodox owned business that have signage announcing they are closed on the Sabbath or Muslim businesses that lock the doors and put up a little sign about opening in 20 minutes during prayer times? Or a sign that lets people know they are in a Schindler’s lift so they don’t start pressing buttons? Does that irritate you too? Or is it just Christians?
Schindler lift?
For protecting Jews with speech impediments.