I Pit HOBBY LOBBY

The BBQ Pit
1101

No. Because when a corporation exercises religion, it is exercising the beliefs of its owners, who are natural persons. That is, in fact, the definition: the purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of the natural people associated with the corporation, including shareholders, officers, and employees..

And this is not new, since the same logic applies to applying the First Amendment to the corporation that publishes Mother Jones magazine. I’ve never once heard you argue that the Foundation for National Progress (a corporation) is incapable of thought, and therefore it cannot have any ideas to protect via the First Amendment.

The purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people associated with the corporation, including shareholders, officers, and employees. By definition.

1102

Well, you’ve said yourself that this isn’t a First Amendment case. The fact that the founding fathers carved out freedom of the press does not, IMHO, extend to the notions that money is speech, and corporations are persons that exercise religion in a way that has to be protected via exemptions from the law.

I haven’t been able to respond very much but I have followed along. I know you’ll disagree with this, but I do think this case is a matter of legislating from the bench. I don’t think the cause of religious freedom was one for which Congress intended to re-interpret the entire corpus of federal law since the precedent of extending personhood to corporations hadn’t been made at that time. ITSM this Court interpreted things that way for its own reasons- it seems to have a hard-on for extending personhood to corporations (a Court can’t have a hard-on you say? I know!)

It seems like part of a political strategy to me- paralyze Congress and neutralize law though religious exemption at the Judiciary while elevating the private corporation to a position as the supreme institution in the land. The conservative movement does seem to be the enemy of the government, you must admit, and these moves are consistent with that. But it isn’t a position I am prepared to shout from the rooftops as admittedly my legal expertise is not such that I can gauge every relevant distinction, nor do I have the time.

But hey, you’re happy, and if you’re happy, I’m happy :slight_smile:

1103

The Court didn’t extend personhood to corporations. Congress did. The question is whether it intended to do so in enacting the RFRA, not whether it does it at all.

1104

Money isn’t speech. No one says money is speech. But freedom of the press means the freedom to use means of mass communication, which costs money.

Corporations have had personhood explicitly for over 100 years. And implicitly forever. That’s because as a matter of law, it’s impractical and unequal to treat associations of people differently from individual people. Alito specifically mentioned this in his decision. THe liberals on the court admitted that religious institutions, despite not being natural persons, had religious rights. There is no interpretation of law or constitutional jurisprudence that says that corporation A has different rights from corporation B, just as individual A cannot have different rights from individual B. “You’re a church, so you get more rights than Exxon.” is akin to “You’re a plumber, so you get more rights than an accountant.”

1105

That is a drastic oversimplification too. Churches have always had more (or at least different) rights from Exxon, even when they choose the corporate form.

1106

I’d need an example of that. I recognize that the government often grants special exemptions to churches that aren’t available to other corporations, but that doesn’t have anything to do with rights. The law doesn’t treat all corporations(or individuals) the same, but the Bill of Rights does, and the RFRA is one of those statutes that also does.

If the contraception mandate could be applied to churches, then legally it could be applied to Hobby Lobby. But if under RFRA or the 1st amendment, such a mandate on churches is illegal, then it’s illegal for all associations with a religious objection.

1107

Okay, here’s a good example: a church may favor church members or believers in its hiring practices - that is, a Catholic diocese may require that its priest be a member of the Catholic Church in good standing, who sincerely holds to the various Catholic creeds. In fact, a church may discriminate on this basis even with regard to irreligious hires like janitors. The exception is carved out from Title VII but would almost certainly have been forced on Congress by the courts otherwise anyway.

Exxon, on the other hand, may not do this. Not only can it not require that its directors or janitors believe in the Church of the Holy Black Gold, it cannot require them to be Christians or Muslims or Jews or anything.

1108

I thought this was a fascinating take on two recent SCOTUS decisions (one, Hobby Lobby, two, “Greece v. Galloway” about opening a town meeting with a Christian prayer).

[QUOTE=DJ Tice, Star Tribune]
In each case, the conservatives could be seen as ruling in favor of religion, and specifically in favor of conservative Christian sensibilities. Meanwhile, in both cases, the liberals could be seen as subordinating those religious interests to other concerns.
…
But between these two cases each court camp jumped from one side of the dividing line to the other. The conservatives protected individual freedom of conscience in Hobby Lobby, but sided with community values over individual sensitivities in Town of Greece. The liberals jumped exactly the other way…
[/quote]

1109

From what I understand, the 1st amendment only applies to those who minister, which would include priests, rabbis, etc., but also teachers. I’m not so sure the 1st amendment requires churches to be exempt from discriminating when hiring janitors.

I think that’s a case where the 1st amendment protects the Ministerial exception, but the Civil Rights Act grants an exemption for other employees as a matter of simple statute.

Given that the Obama administration decided to try to apply civil rights law to a case where a church hired a teacher, I’m actually surprised they haven’t tried to sue churches over non-ministerial positions.

1110

The Catholic Church is a tax-exempt organization, and has been for a long time. Same with Exxon. :smiley:

1111

During the SDMB debates about the Hobby Lobby case pre-decision, there were a couple schools of “thought.” I put the word in quotation marks because for some reason, this case causes people to stubbornly cling to non-factual information even after repeated exposure to factual rebuttals.

Hamlet’s argument was cogent, although ultimately wrong. But he could have been right – that is, the Court could have seen it his way. His point was that, notwithstanding the language of the RFRA, the ‘context’ of the RFRA was to provide religious freedom to people and to non-profit religious corporations. His reasoning was, basically, that the Court had never before applied the RFRA’s guarantees to a for-profit company, and that the “line” society draws between for-profit and non-profit is one that seems to make sense for this determination, since we’re used to churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. being non-profit and tax-exempt.

My counter to that was that we can easily imagine for-profit corporations that most people would agree should have at least some measure of RFRA protection: the kosher meat market, the halal meat market, the Christian book store, and the Mahayana Buddhist retreat center could all be organized as for-profit corporations.

I think the main thing that has people losing their minds here (besides the usual problems involved in sloppy liberal thinking, of course…)[sup]*[/sup] is because they sense that, as the old Sesame Street song used to point out, “One of these things is not like the other.” Put Hobby Lobby in a line-up that includes the kosher meat market, the halal meat market, the Christian book store, and the Mahayana Buddhist retreat center and it stands out as the one that’s least able to claim a religious purpose.

Right?

But here’s the problem: the RFRA as it’s written right now really doesn’t contain any way to distinguish between the kosher meat market, the halal meat market, the Christian book store, the Mahayana Buddhist retreat center, and Hobby Lobby. So we have this sort of stubborn, “I know it when I see it,” frustration about this decision.

Many people feel that when the courts encounter this kind of situation, they should step in to fix it. Congress didn’t, and they have the power, so they should craft some kind of framework that captures the heart of “I know it when I see it,” and go from there.

Many OTHER people don’t believe that’s the proper role for the courts – that it makes the courts into a Super-Congress, fixing what Congress either got wrong or is too broken to fix.

How do you feel about this view?

[sup]*[/sup]I kid… I kid because I love.

1112

Change “least able” to the *truthful *“unable” to claim a religious purpose and try again. :rolleyes:

1113

Yes, Counselor, it is rational. What it is not, is reasonable.

We most all love babies, we hardly have a choice, it is hard wired, the programming is installed in our BIOS. If we didn’t think they were the most adorable sacks of water ever, only one in ten of them would live to see their third birthday. As a natural result, we have a visceral, atavistic reaction to the prospect of abortion. So do I. I can recall how disgusted I was to learn that in the Soviet Union of old, abortion was the primary form of birth control. Bulgarian condoms, not like wearing a raincoat in a shower, but wearing a haz-mat suit. That, combined with Communist Calvinism, a puritanical disdain for human joy. Rational, but not reasonable.

I quite understand. But people are going to fuck, its the Prime Directive. Every cell in every body is wired the same way, reproduce! “Go forth and multiply” sayeth the Goddess. Look at a male praying mantis, screwing like crazy as the female chews away his thorax. Or my own irrational attachment to Sarah Jean…but I digress.

The “pro-life” zealots thought themselves into a box. Their views were popular when largely centered around babies and/or fetuses that were far enough along to resemble babies. But they couldn’t find a clear, bright line, so they backtracked all the way to conception. Rational, but not reasonable.

What? Da fuq? The moment of divinity takes place somewhere between fertilization and the first mitosis? No, that is not a human being, at that point, the zygote is the least human it will ever be! It is nothing but potential humanity. That’s like saying the most significant moment of the Moon landing was the blast off! That zygote may become more human, so let us hope and pray. But it will not be less human until the day when it become worm food!

It might be rational to afford the Amish access to freeways with their horse-drawn buggies. Equal rights, maybe, something like that. But it would not be reasonable. It might be rational to decide that these employers have the right to afflict their employees with their own theological derangement, but it is not reasonable.

Reasonable is tolerance, muddling through, finding some set of mutual accommodations, because we must live together, or die. Reasonable is not rationally pursuing a theological opinion to its extreme conclusion, and inflicting that conclusion upon others who do not share it. It is not reasonable to hamper someone’s access to a form of contraception that may, that might! share some characteristic to abortion.

When the law is used to be unreasonable, it is a mockery, it degrades the law and undermines respect for the law. Rational, but not reasonable.

1114

I’d be amused simply to see him explain how selling craft supplies for profit is a “religious purpose”.

1115

If I were going to build a cross, I’d start at Home Depot.

1116

If the Romans had bought it at Ikea, Jesus would have died of old age.

1117

Home Depot sponsors gay pride events and that makes the baby Jesus cry. Though probably not as much as hypothetically being aborted.

1118

Shit, he *wanted *to die for us anyway.

1119

No, actually. The examples you offer are explicitly aimed towards a customer base of like minded persons. Hence, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that there is a religious component of their identity.

When did Hobby Lobby publicly identify themselves as concerned with promoting and supplying “pro-llfe” macrame string?

1120

And so, when a company incurs obligations or debts or liabilities of any kind, then they too should be treated the SAME way. If the “rights” are “extended” then so too, should the duties, obligations, risks, laibilities and debts be “extended”.

But a company is still a THING. IT does not believe ANYthing.