I’d say that it’s “The results of following the text of the law results in something that contradicts the stated purposes for that law, and, absent an explicit declaration otherwise, it seems such an interpretation was not intended.”
Of course, I’m using your definition of “following the text.” I’d say the alternative still follows the text. Arguing that a corporation is not a person as intended by the statute, since it cannot actually practice religion, is still also a valid textual interpretation. It’s still based on reading the text and figuring out what it means. What it’s not based on is treating the text like a logical syllogism.
If laws were actually written as precisely as logical syllogisms, maybe I’d support that style of analysis more. Then it would be necessarily clear whether the RFRA was intended to apply to for-profit corporations.
Do you think that the law wasn’t intended to protect the practices of Temple Rodef Shalom (a corporation) and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington (a corporation?
Bullshit and you know it. At least you should know it. Their position, clearly stated by Ginsberg, was that the context of the RFRA, including the legislative history that held absolutely no reference to its applying to for-profit corporations, and the case law preceding the enactment of RFRA, clearly establishes that the legislature never intended RFRA to apply to for-profit corporations.
But you go on with your standard bullshit. I don’t want to break your stride again.
It also had absolutely no reference to corporations beginning with the letter “H.”
So I guess that doubly proves the point, eh?
Let’s see… it has no reference to corporations whose two word names rhyme with each other – another black mark against believing the RFRA applied to Hobby Lobby. The RFRA is also silent on its protections of corporations that end in the letter ‘y’. Wow, the more I look at it, the more I wonder how ANYONE could think the RFRA applied to Hobby Lobby, the rhyming-name corporation that begins with ‘H’ and ends with ‘y’. Because the RFRA never mentioned any of those qualities.
I asked this once before, and as far as I know it went unanswered—possibly because it is so stupid that the answer should be completely obvious, but nonetheless:
If there is a method in place to provide government-subsidized contraception for employers who do not wish to provide it, and these employers object to filling out the required opt-out form, why can this not be fixed by removing this requirement? Set a deadline for a response, and if there’s no response, the default assumption is that they won’t cover contraceptives, therefore the backup coverage is implemented? They don’t want to be forced into an action, so let their inaction do the work for them.
Do you honestly think this kind of analysis would pass any kind of muster in court? That if you can point out unmentioned irrelevancies, and that magically negates the real, relevant distinction that has existed for centuries?
Yeah, good luck with that.
But I know how this ends. You continue to post, I run out of time and patience, and you repeatedly misstate the position that disagrees with you for pages and pages. and I can’t correct you every time.
Well, that kind of passive compliance is okay for Jews who want end-runs around Sabbath prohibitons (i.e. set the elevator to automatically stop at each floor so one doesn’t have to “work” by pushing a button) but some Christians think they’re special or something.
What struck me most about it was the tone of betrayal, a sense that collegial propriety had been misused. A lot of what I’d read about this decision emphasized the limited scope of the decision, which the decision itself explicitly referenced. I’m wondering if that explicit limitation was included in order to sway that all-important fifth vote?
No, I don’t think my ‘begins with H,’ would pass muster in court. But it’s just as not-mentioned as any distinction between profit and non-profit: the law mentions both zero times.
The RFRA says “persons.” The Dictionary Act says that means corporations. Neither law limits them to non-profit corporations.
It’s as simple as that. The minority thought the RFRA should have that limit, and wanted to write it in. My summary was perfectly correct.
The difference between for-profit corporations and religious organizations has been around for centuries. Unless you’re contesting that too.
And, as Ginsburg pointed out, RFRA, if it had been intended to cover for-profit corporations, would have been a big change in the law. When a change that large, and the expansion of that big of scope, is intended to happen, Congress usually gets around to mentioning it. Instead of actually doing so, Congress instead said: the purpose of this statute is to overturn the analysis of Smith.
But I’ve pointed this out to you dozens of times before. And it didn’t make one lick of difference in your misrepresenting the opinions of those who disagree with you before, so I’m not holding my breath that it will now.
What specific difference? Again, I acknowledge that “for-profit” begins with ‘p’ and “non-profit” begins with ‘n,’ so I certainly admit that there are some differences. But when did the law start making the explicit distinction?
And more to the point: why is that distinction relevant? A bookstore specializing in works on meditation and rebirth in the Therevada Buddhist tradition can be a for-profit company, and protecting its exercise of religious rights is certainly the kind of protection that legislators meant when they passed the RFRA.
Nope, as proved wrong above: pre-Smith, the Buddhist Books and Mindfulness Meditation Company, Inc. would have been entitled to protection under by Sherbert v. Verner, and Wisconsin v. Yoder even as a for-profit entity.
It wouldn’t have been any huge expansion, Hamlet. I grant it was an issue of first impression, and that no case prior to these had ever found that the RFRA applied to for-profit corporations. But similarly, no court had found that it didn’t.
And the law says that it applies to all corporations. It’s really just as simple as that.
RFRA: “I’m a federal law, and I apply to all persons.”
Dictionary Act: “Any time federal law says ‘persons,’ that includes corporations.”
Ginsburg: “Even so, no one thought that for-profit corporations would be included, and it’s a really bad idea, so I vote to not apply it.”
SCOTUS Majority: “The law says what it says. Both before and after the RFRA, Congress wrote other laws that explictly limited themselves to for-profit, non-profit, or natural persons only. So we know Congress knew how to say it if they wanted to.”
That point of Ginsburg’s minority opinion was addressed by the majority on pg. 4 of the pdf, in the syllabus.
(*iii) Also flawed is the claim that RFRA offers no protection because it only codified pre-Smith Free Exercise Clause precedents, none of which squarely recognized free-exercise rights for for-profit corporations. First, nothing in RFRA as originally enacted suggested that its definition of “exercise of religion” was meant to be tied to pre-Smith interpretations of the First Amendment. Second, if RFRA’s original text were not clear enough, the RLUIPA amendment surely dispels any doubt that Congress intended to separate the definition of the phrase from that in First Amendment case law. Third, the pre-Smith case of Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U. S. 617, suggests, if anything, that for-profit corporations can exercise religion. Finally, the results would be absurd if RFRA, a law enacted to provide very broad protection for religious liberty, merely restored this Court’s pre-Smith decisions in ossified form and restricted RFRA claims to plaintiffs who fell within a category of plaintiffs whose claims the Court had recognized before Smith.
(3) Finally, HHS contends that Congress could not have wanted RFRA to apply to for-profit corporations because of the difficulty of ascertaining the “beliefs” of large, publicly traded corporations, but HHS has not pointed to any example of a publicly traded corporation asserting RFRA rights, and numerous practical restraints would likely prevent that from occurring. HHS has also provided no evidence that the purported problem of determining the sincerity of an asserted religious belief moved Congress to exclude for-profit corporations from RFRA’s protection. That disputes among the owners of corporations might arise is not a problem unique to this context. State corporate law provides a ready means for resolving any conflicts by, for example, dictating how a corporation can establish its governing structure. Courts will turn to that structure and the underlying state law in resolving disputes.*
Since the majority doesn’t agree with Ginsburg’s personal view of RFRA, Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion, in this specific case, won’t be making one lick of difference in future RFRA-related cases.
Bricker: We’ve danced this dance before. If you have any questions, I’ve expressed them, over and over to you in the thread in GD and some earlier in this Pit thread.
Unlike you, I have no interest in repeating myself ad nauseam until everyone who disagrees gets bored or has other things to do. All I’m asking is that you stop misrepresenting Ginsberg’s opinion and the opinion of those who disagree with you.
I don’t agree that I’m misrepresenting Ginsburg’s opinion. The text of the law is clear; her rationale is that even though the text permits it, Congress could not have intended the RFRA to apply to Hobby Lobby, because of all the awful things that will happen if it does.
Again, her rationale isn’t that “awful things will happen”, it’s that, for the first time ever, for profit corporations have been determined to have the ability to freely exercise it’s religion, and that, if that change was what Congress had intended, it would have said it. She certainly does mention that the ruling will have “untoward effects” given that its logic covers not just closely held corporations, but all for profit corporations, but pretending that that is the sum and substance of her opinion is a clear misrepresentations.
Now you can repeat yourself for a 5th time, and declare yourself victor by attrition because I don’t have the stamina you do for repetition. Congrats.