ACA does not mandate comprehensive insurance. It only requires specifically a few things, chosen rather arbitrarily.
For example, if it is established that blood transfusions do not have to be covered under an ACA-compliant plan, is there any rationale for requiring contraception coverage other than the administration just felt like it?
I keep on trying to find online whether blood transfusions are required under the Essential Health Benefits rules and can’t find it anywhere.
If indeed they are not a required benefit, that might explain why the Witnesses haven’t made a peep.
There’s a Hobby Lobby down the road from my parents’ home. I’ve only been in there a couple of times, usually when my mom wants to buy something. Meh. I’m not impressed. First, they label NOTHING! The workers know where the stuff is, but they can’t be bothered to actually show you where. They simply say the name of the section. Darn near any other store, that wouldn’t be a problem. Want to know why? Because the other stores LABEL THE SECTIONS! Good grief. Oh, on top of that, the stuff’s not all that hot in the first place. Cheaper at other places, one of which is two blocks away.
Seriously, from what I’ve noticed of the places, I’d have to say it’s designed to self-destruct anyway.
No. The nuns says that this form deputizes someone else to sin on their behalf.
It requires a lot of things (if by ACA) you mean the implementing regulations. Can you point to any essential coverage requirements that are “arbitrary”?
Which is a really shaky legal argument.
By that argument, they could object to, for instance, paying taxes because they object to how the taxes are spent (such as for Planned Parenthood).
The idea that being required to sign a document claiming an exemption from a law on religious freedom grounds is a violation of religious freedom is a bit weak.
Well, no. Every man has the discretion to determine his own religious views, where he draws the line (and lines always need to be drawn), and when he is prepared to abandon them. Every man is a canon law unto himself. It’s not our business to decide when the belief is rediculous or to have the government engage in theological analysis of the underpinings of the belief.
Where religious freedom doesn’t make every man a law unto himself is that we draw limits on how deferential we’re going to be to religious objections. Whether you adopt Scalia’s approach (now the First Amendment principle) of “neutral and generally applicable” or the Sherbet (and RFRA) balancing approach, those are both about what you do when a law substantially burdens a religious belief. It would be inappropriate for the government to tell people that their religious beliefs are wrong.
OK, just for fun: why don’t you summarize the caselaw as you understand it? You keep raising hypothetical cases that have ready answers in the current caselaw, so I am left to conclude that you are mystified on the subject – but perhaps I am being uncharitable.
So you tell me – what is your understanding of how the law is supposed to weigh religiously-based objections?
Take my comments as either applications of caselaw or my opinions on how caselaw ought to be. I’m not an expert in it, nor am I that interested in it. If you’re aware of caselaw that contradicts my opinions, feel free to say so.
I have cited previously the cases and statutes that set out the standards to be applied: the RFRA, a federal statute found at 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(b), requires that government justify a law that burdens religious practice by proving that the law “…is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest…” and that the law “…is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” Both these phrases invoke the case of Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), in which those standards were crafted. The US Supreme Court backed away from the so-called Sherbert test by deciding Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). Congress then passed the RFRA in an effort to restore the Sherbert test. The Supremes invalidated parts of the RFRA in a later case, but not as it applies here.
So the point that I’m making is: in the years that followed Sherbert v. Verner, many cases arose which addressed and delineated the kinds of cases you seem to feel prove something: refusal to pay taxes based on religious opposition to how taxes were used (US v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, (1982)).
It’s unclear to me how you can make definitive statements about the law, and yet when called on your lack of knowledge, disclaim both interest and expertise. “I have a right to my opinions about the law, no matter how uninformed they may be,” you seem to be saying.
[QUOTE=Bricker;16999838 in the years that followed Sherbert v. Verner, many cases arose which addressed and delineated the kinds of cases you seem to feel prove something: refusal to pay taxes based on religious opposition to how taxes were used (US v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, (1982)).[/QUOTE]
Thanks. So I was right. Seems the nuns are on shaky ground given that case.
I never claimed to have informed opinions at all though. I’m just adding to the discussion. How about this - consider my opinions to be questions. I’ll put them in the form of a question from now on, for instance: “Couldn’t the nuns, by the logic they are using, claim a right not to pay taxes either? That wouldn’t make sense to me. Anyone know of any caselaw on that?” I’ll try to remember to do it that way from now on.
Actually, no. In U.S. v. Lee, the Court based their decision, inter alia, on the following logic:
Those limitations do not exist in this case. There IS a principled way of distinguishing between the general goal of health insurance and the specific prospect of funding contraception.
Looking again at your quote from Lee:
Sure it could - if you allowed denominations (or nuns) to simply pay the amount they owe in taxes after deducting a proportional amount for what government program they oppose. Right? What could go wrong with that?
That’s the equivalent of what they nuns are asking for. Or rather, they’re not - they aren’t even being required to do anything more than sign a form that claims the religious exemption - a bit like an Amish taxpayer filing a tax return.
Quite a bit. So far as I am ware, there is a fair amount of disagreement as to what costs should be fairly ascribed to Social Security. For example, current payments benefit current retirees – are we talking about exempting the Amish for payments that cover them, or that amount that is supposedly set aside to cover the current employees when they retire? And what is the ‘proportion?’
In any event, that case pre-dates the RFRA. I mentioned it to show that caselaw had methods to address similar claims.
They say that the law requiring them to pay for contraception is, by their beliefs, requiring them to sin.
They say that signing the form exempting them from the law has the legal effect of transferring the obligation to sin to a third party.
Why, when you mention signing the form, do you fail to mention that portion of their argument? Ignoring it does not rebut it.
But according to the case you cited, no such questions need be asked.
The law doesn’t require them to pay for contraception though.
Which is the exact same logic as, say, transferring sin by exempting oneself from taxes, since someone else would pay for it instead, or transferring sin by exempting to being drafted, since someone else would be drafted in your place. I doubt either of those would be accepted though.
I’m glad you’re here to represent their arguments so I can rebut them more thoroughly. Thanks.
I cited Lee to show that the factor in the Court’s decision against the Amish did not apply to the current case.
The law requires them to pay their insurer to provide contraception coverage – unless they certify they are exempt. If they do, the law then requires their insurer to pay for it.
Not exact same, no. In the case of taxes, no additional tax is assessed to Joe simply because Allen pays, or does not pay, his taxes. Moreover, the link is attenuated: you pay taxes; the IRS collects them. Then the money is transferred into the Treasury’s general fund, and then as an appropriation to a department, then to the program activity within the department, and possibly other steps as well before being ultimately used for the nefarious purpose.
Here, in contrast, the link is one chain long: from the sisters to the Brothers. Why isn’t that a difference that interests you?
Lance, this really isn’t hard. Strict Scrutiny. Compelling interests.
In order for the government to infringe on religious practice, they have to be pursuing a compelling government interest, and there can be no alternative means to achieve the same interest that do not infringe.
Think about “reasonable accomodations” in regards to the disabled. A business must make reasonable accomodations for disabled customers or employees. But if the accomodations are not reasonable, then they don’t have to do it.
It goes similarly for religion. The contraception mandate is not so vital that it has to be universally applied. Exceptions have already been made, which means that more exceptions can be made. The administration just doesn’t wanna.
All the government has to do is let EMPLOYEES sigh an affidavit requesting coverage from an insurer, leaving out the employer entirely. Don’t make the employer also sign it, and don’t make them pay for it, and you achieve the interest without an infringement. Easy, easy, easy. They don’t want to do it for political reasons: you’d have to pass a statute, probably, and it won’t pass right now. but that’s not the court’s problem. Congress should have thought of that when Democrats controlled it. Constitutional ignorance, or insoucience, has a price.
I thought it was determined by a panel of independent experts.
That doesn’t seem a bit attenuated to you?
They are not being asked to be complicit in sin. They are directly interfering with their perceived sin of others.
Given that strict scrutiny is very difficult to meet, in what way does this not permit every man from carving individual exceptions to virtually all the laws of the land based on individual religious beliefs.
Just as there is a way to distinguish between the general goal of health insurance and the specific prospect of funding diabetes treatment (for gluttons) or STD and AIDS treatment (for adulterers) or smoking related cancers (for those who do not treat their body as the temple of God; seriously, there are Christian churches that consider smoking to be a sin).
So, their insurers are free to make their own RFRA claim. They are not pushing insurance companies into committing what those insurance companies consider sin.
You realize that the money paid to an insurance company is just as funginble as the money paid in taxes, right?
We have exceptions to murder too, that doesn’t mean that we should be making more exceptions because I believe in human sacrifice. And in this case, I thought they were already giving the nuns an exclusion, but the nuns also want to prevent others from covering their employees for contraception as well.
Why would they have to pass a statute to provide this benefit with an affiddavit from the employee but not if there is an affidavit from the employer. Are employers more credible than employees when they sign affidavits?
No, thus there’s no reason to require the employer to sign one.
I think the reason they don’t want the employee doing it is because then the employee can just not bother. But again, that doesn’t damage the program in any way. A person choosing to go without contraception coverage is not endangering themselves in any way.