Update: Some Republican congresspeople have filed an amicus curiae brief with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
I so hope this bankrupts them.
This gets even more retarded. I didn’t even realize Hobby Lobby was incorporated. How can they possibly have any claim to religious freedom?
My CEO is Scientologist and says he’ll refuse to pay for any insurance that covers psychiatry.
OK - that didn’t happen.
Could you expand on your reasoning a bit here?
A corporation is a legal person which exists entirely apart from the “founder of the company”. It has no beliefs. Its purpose (assuming, as here, that it is a for-profit entity) is to maximize shareholder value.
ETA: It’s apparently not publicly traded, so there is no fiduciary duty issue, but the same reasoning applies.
Can you identify some authority which excludes for-profit corporations from religious freedom guarantees? For example, I don’t find anything in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq.) limiting its reach to non-profit entities.
Because religious associations are most often non-profit, I understand the tendency would be to conflate the two. But I can easily imagine a corporation set up to be politically influential not wanting to risk IRS trouble and deciding to become a for-profit entity without surrendering its religious character.
I’m not really sure how that’s relevant, since Hobby Lobby is not challenging a zoning ordinance and isn’t in prison.
And what if the founders or owners were Christian Scientist? Could they limit the insurance to covering the cost of contacting and transportation for a “Healer”?
The trouble with allowing any leeway at all is that the employees will eventually need medical care, and when they do, they will go to the ERs, which do not have the right to refuse them; so the rest of us end up paying for it.
Okay, I see what you’re saying. That’s irrelevant. The First Amendment protects “sincerely held religious beliefs” (Employment Division v. Smith, etc.) A corporation, by definition, cannot have a sincerely held religious belief. It can’t even have an insincere one.
A corporation is an association of individual natural persons. Such individual natural persons may indeed have sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as the desire to freely associate with each other in accord with, or to further those, beliefs.
In Illinois, to pick an example, 805 ILCS 110/35 provides:
Are you suggesting that a corporation formed in accord thereto would not have First Amendment protections?
My own state does not carve out a special religious incorporation category. This makes it even more clear that a corporation in Virginia can exist for religious worship, religious proselytization, or religious association purposes and receive First Amendment protection.
That’s why I am distinguishing based on profit motive.
oK, I am a little confused. This corporate entity, the purpose of which is to sell stuff, not to further any religious beliefs, can claim religious belief based on the the fact that it is a collection of individuals? What if not everyone in that collection holds the same religious beliefs? Would that throw a monkey wrench in the collection of sincere beliefs? If some executives go to synagogue, is that relevant to the corporation’s belief? Can they dismiss people who hold different beliefs to keep the collection of individuals homogenous in religious belief?
Yes, natural persons may have sincerely held religious beliefs. However, an association of persons, in all probability, does not have sincerely held religious beliefs. Some will believe in one thing, others in another. Within your church, there are lots of people who sincerely believe contraception is a perversion of God’s will. There are others, you’ll concede, who do not. The fact that one group or the other is in the majority does not mean the corporation “has a belief”. Beliefs cannot be formed democratically.
Can a church discriminate based on religion those they serve in the same fashion as a corporation?
Is there – in the law – some authority for this distinction?
I don’t understand the question.
A church can BE a corporation. A corporation can discriminate based on religion under certain circumstances, and is not free to do so under other circumstances. Without more detail, i can’t answer this question.
It’s meaningless to speak of the “belief” of a corporation in this way, since there is no way to guarantee uniformity of belief.
But that’s not necessary in order to answer the question, “Do corporations have a First Amendment claim to religious freedom?”
Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC allowed a Church to ignore the ADA because it was a religious institution. Are the same rights to ignore the ADA afforded to any corporation that is not a church?
Sure. Not much, though. Perhaps more importantly, I am unable to identify any authority providing that corporations enjoy the right of religious freedom.
That’s pretty much my point.