Clearly, a legislature can include religious freedom among the privileges a corporation can enjoy. However, in the absence of such legislation, I don’t see how, because a corporation cannot hold a religious belief. Its owners obviously can, but a corporation is an independent legal entity. It’s like saying that a child would be deemed to believe whatever its parents believe.
I’d think that the base claim of religious beliefs being smashed is utter nonsense. No one is forcing anyone to get an abortion or birth control. They are being given the choice.
The corporation might as well demand that the wages they pay are not used on pornography or flowers for slutty girls.
Why do you keep conflating belief with freedom?
Are you sure? Jesus was a handyman.
Where’s the conflation? The point seems to be that if an entity is intrinsically incapable of doing something (e.g., a corporation holding a religious belief), then it makes no sense to speak of that entity having the “freedom” to do that thing.
Yes. Bricker, do I have the freedom to use my heat-vision to defend myself?
That. I should also note (as I probably did much earlier in the thread) that IMHO the belief bit is irrelevant; this is a neutral regulation.
No. It does make sense:
That’s the holding I quoted above.
No, I’m not sure. I’d need to see the BFOQ for each job.
What “holding”? You merely quoted your own assertion in a previous post and said “that’s the holding”. Exactly what actual legal pronouncement are you referring to in order to justify your assertion that it makes sense to speak of a corporation having the “freedom” to hold a religious belief?
Did you read post 121?
Tyndall House Publishers:
Isn’t that what I posted in post 121?
Yes, I did.
Yes, it is. Is that what you meant by saying the following?
If so, how does a corporation’s “having standing to assert the free exercise right of its owners” make it meaningful to speak of a corporation “having the freedom to hold a religious belief”?
To my layperson’s perception, it seems obvious that a company’s human owners can indeed have a religious belief, and the actions of the company can be guided to some extent by that belief. (E.g., the reason that Hobby Lobby the corporation doesn’t have business hours on Sunday is that the religious beliefs of Hobby Lobby’s human owners are opposed to doing business on Sunday.)
But that seems entirely different from claiming that a corporation itself can have a religious belief and therefore has religious freedom of its own.
Though I doubt a layperson’s citing of legal rulings is likely to be particularly germane, here’s a discussion that seemed to articulate some of the objections I had due to the idea of a corporation’s religious belief being nonsensical.
In other words, if you’re saying that a corporation is somehow asserting the free exercise of religion only because its particular human owners hold a particular religious belief, then that seems like the exact opposite of the corporation having any religious belief or religious freedom on its own account.
If, for example, Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. is considered to “hold” the religious beliefs of Pentecostal Protestant Christianity because its owners are Pentecostal, what would happen to its “beliefs” if it were the object of a successful takeover by, say, a group of individuals who happened to be confirmed Wiccans? Would Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. still be entitled to “maintain” its original Pentecostal “beliefs”, or would it automatically “convert” to Wicca? Would that be a forced conversion and a violation of the corporation’s “freedom of religion”? How could we know what Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.'s “sincere” religious “beliefs” were?
The fact that all these questions are intrinsically absurd seems to me to indicate that, as RNATB noted, it’s meaningless to speak of a corporation’s having religious freedom, because a corporation by its nature can’t hold a religious belief.
I can’t wrap my head around being upset that places choose to be closed on Sunday (I see this same complaint about Chick-fil-a). There are plenty of placed around here – usually Mom-and-Pop operations – that are closed one or two days a week, or have inconveniently shorter hours on Saturday or whatever. It’s seems weird to get all indignant about it.
(In general though I support the OP: HL needs to get over themselves and follow the law.)
The indignation comes from the near-certainty that there are non-Christians in the area who would love to have a part-time job and would be happy to work on Sundays. While at first blush it appears to be a laudable rejection of commerce and gain in compliance with a religious belief, what these people are saying is that they choose to impose their own religious Sabbath on all their employees, or else that they only employ those of their own religion.
Either way it’s repugnant to those of us who were raised to believe that religious freedom is a basic tenet of the American Way; and also to the adherents of “Capitalism uber alles.”
Does a corporation have freedom to acquire title to real property?
Does a corporation have a belief about real property, or a desire concerning real property?
A corporation’s freedom to act is not tied to its ability to believe.
Perhaps this is where we’re getting stuck. Please note the difference between:
- “Religious freedom”
- “Having the freedom to hold a religious belief”
Does a corporation have religious freedom? Yes: by acting in accord with the religious beliefs of its owner.
Does a corporation have the freedom to hold a religious belief? No.
Protection of property rights is not tied to a sincerely held belief.
What about banks or doctor’s offices? Are they forcing employees to observe the Sabbath too? Why don’t they hire part-time workers for Sundays?
It’s bizarre that a business choosing to be closed for religions reasons violates your notions of both religious freedom and capitalism, when it is the perfect embodiment of both.
Why can’t religious freedom, as applied to corporations, be tied to the religious belief of the corporation’s owners?
IANAL, but I don’t think it’d violate the corporation’s freedom of religion since the conversion was not at the behest of a state actor.
Bricker, could a corporation owned by Muslims require its female staff to wear niqabs?
This is a silly analogy. The process of acquiring title to real property doesn’t require any beliefs or desires on the part of the acquirer. It’s merely a legal procedure for changing which entity is considered the legal owner of the property.
Holding a religious belief, on the other hand, by its very definition requires the holder to be capable of belief.
Then a corporation does not have “religious freedom” or “free exercise of religion” in the sense that human beings do. If you want to use the words “corporate religious freedom” as a technical term to denote “corporate policies that are determined by the religious beliefs of the corporation’s owners”, sure, knock yourself out. But it is not “religious freedom” as we human beings know and exercise it, and consequently RNATB was not in fact “conflating belief with freedom” when he pointed that out to you.