Yes, but the “always” is what’s tripping me up here.
Always means that the other two contentious items were never a part of Hobby Lobby’s insurance offering.
Which is contrary to your claim that “… just two years ago this wasn’t a problem for them and now there’s Jesus.”
It’s always been a problem for them. They have always insisted on no abortion-causing therapies in their health plan. when they discovered there were two drugs that had such effects, they ordered their insurance carrier to remove them.
Wait a tick. Is Hobby Lobby refusing to cover only certain forms of oral contraception?
Those and IUD, which also prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo.
Are you going to get to a point anytime soon, or is this dance going to continue.
I wasn’t comparing corporate law and same sex marriage. I was comparing your apparent need for a case to be overruled to be considered a "change’ in the law. That’s simply not true, in both the case of SSM and the case of RFRA.
Again with the dancing.
I asked: “Or if you believe, even without RFRA, the Constitution itself protects a for-profit corporation’s free exercise rights?”
You answered: “I don’t think the First Amendment helps Hobby Lobby against the ACA.”
Now maybe my mistake was giving you the benefit of the doubt, assuming that when you answered my question, you were actually answering the question I asked as opposed to a separate question that I didn’t. That’s on me, for assuming you might actually want to debate this instead of playing lawyer games.
So, I’ll ask again: “if you believe, even without RFRA, the Constitution itself protects a for-profit corporation’s free exercise rights?”
Again, I’m not talking about the exact time period, I’m asking you about the change in the law. Did RFRA change the law and grant rights to free exercise of religion to all corporations? Or, if you insist on continuing your dance: “Isn’t it true that you believe when RFRA was enacted, it granted rights to the free exercise of religion to all corporations?” “Isn’t it true that, prior to RFRA, all corporations did not have the rights to free exercise of religion?” And isn’t it true that that would be a major change in the state of the law?"
It is histrionic to read substantial burden as, “feeling sad that someone used something you gave them in a way that you disagree with.”
But in the case of SSM, it was clear that no same-sex marriages existed or were permitted. This was clear even before states started passing laws prohibiting it. So a change in that represented a real change.
But for-profit companies had been exercising religious rights for two hundred years. They just didn’t run into the kinds of problems that generated case law, as a rule, because no one thought they shouldn’t. In Commonwealth v Wolf, 3 Serg. & R. 48 (Sup. Ct. Penn. 1817), the idea that for-profit businesses nonetheless are entitled to a right to religiously observe the Sabbath was accepted, for instance.
Your question obscures that distinction. It’s not “dancing” – it’s the clear and obvious recognition that for more than 200 years, the idea that a corporation could both make a profit and engage in religion was unremarkable. The colonial charters mentioned in the Declaration of Independence were companies that combined religion and profit.
The decision in United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, did not once mention the apparently fatal fact that the Amish carpenter shop was making a profit. The Orthodox Jewish merchants in Braunfeld v. Brown lost their case too, but not one writer on the Supreme Court said it was because they were for-profit companies.
And in Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, Inc., no one seems to have suggested that Caldor couldn’t raise a religious freedom claim when they were sued. Why?
At a more fundamental level: why? Why does the combination of profit motive and corporate form together rip away the protections of free religious exercise? All a “non-profit” corporation means is that profits are not paid to shareholders, but returned to the company. A “non-profit” can make loads of money and pay huge salaries… it just can’t pay its profits to its owners. What makes that single aspect so fatal to an exercise of religion?
Yes, it does.
Yes.
No.
No.
I’m asking you if you know how the courts interpret “substantial burden.” You have made it clear how you, personally, would like to interpret it.
Do you disagree with what I’ve said?
Yes. Your statement bears no resemblance to how the courts interpret “substantial burden.”
As everyone knows, the First Amendment does not prohibit corporations from discriminating on the basis of religion, as it applies only to government actions. If the First Amendment, even without the RFRA, protects a corporation’s right to practice its religion, doesn’t this make the Civil Rights Act (which does protect the religious rights of employees) an unconstitutional infringement on corporate freedom?
Let’s say, for example, that the Juche Corporation required its employees to sign a declaration that Kim Jong-Un was a god and to begin each workday by genuflecting to His image. They fire an employee for refusing to do so and that employee sues under the Civil Rights Act.
The Juche Corp. counters by arguing that the First Amendment protects their religious beliefs against government interference, but does not protect the employee’s rights against corporate interference. And, in any case, the Civil Rights Act was effectively repealed when the RFRA was passed and the Supreme Court upheld the Hobby Lobby case, so there.
How would “Scalito” rule on such a claim?
So the courts interpret “substantial burden” to include feeling bad because something you gave someone is used in a way you disagree with?
Interesting. Someone should change that, because it’s asinine.
Well, the word “religion,” gets involved, because the RFRA is actually about substantial burdens on a person’s (or corporation’s) religious practice.
Congress has every right to change it. In fact, the Supreme Court DID change it, before the RFRA was passed, when they decided Employment Division v. Smith. Congress passed the RFRA to change it BACK.
No.
Neither the RFRA or the First Amendment serves as an absolute bar to any government interference.
(As an aside: have you read the RFRA? Have you read the briefs of any of the parties? Have you taken any steps at all, apart from reading posts here, to understand how these requirements are applied and how they interact with one another? Just curious…)
The RFRA says that the federal government can’t substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion UNLESS the burden is necessary to further a compelling government interest, and the burden must be the least restrictive way in which to further the government interest.
Can you explain how, precisely, you fear this would make the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional?
Who is Scalito?
If Hobby Lobby should lose, could a group of like-minded employees challenge the law on the grounds that their compensation plan now requires them to purchase coverage that they find religiously objectionable? Wouldn’t this avoid the “corporate personhood” issue?
That’s an interesting question, although the corporate personhood issue isn’t even really an issue. That was decided over 100 years ago. Corporations, and any other organization made up of people, get treated as people for the purposes of constitutional rights.
If you don’t believe this, then the FBI would love to raid the ACLU anytime they feel like without a warrant.
And was a sole proprietorship with the owner asserting HIS personal right to free exercise. And, as it made me chuckle, included these gems: "“of the utmost
moment” that members of the community abide by a day of rest “to invigorate their bodies for fresh exertions of activity.” Ahhhh, the good old days.
Because it wasn’t a corporation asserting the free exercise rights, but rather the Mr. Lee and his employees. The entire Lee case is full of discussions of a person’s rights, and the religious beliefs of the followers:
“The preliminary inquiry in determining the existence of a constitutionally required exemption is whether the payment of social security taxes and the receipt of benefits interferes with the free exercise rights of the Amish.”
“The conclusion that there is a conflict between the Amish faith and the obligations imposed by the social security system is only the beginning, however, and not the end, of the inquiry.”
“to make accommodation between the religious action and an exercise of state authority is a particularly delicate task . . . because resolution in favor of the State results in the choice to the individual of either abandoning his religious principle or facing . . . prosecution.”
Again, the rights asserted were clearly those of the merchants and not those of some kind of corporation:
“They claimed that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and constituted a law respecting an establishment of religion, and that it interfered with the free exercise of their religion by imposing serious economic disadvantages upon them if they adhere to the observance of their Sabbath, and that it would operate so as to hinder the Orthodox .Jewish Faith in gaining new members.”
"Appellants contend that the enforcement against them of the Pennsylvania statute will prohibit the free exercise of their religion because, due to the statute’s compulsion to close on Sunday, appellants will suffer substantial economic loss, to the benefit of their non-Sabbatarian competitors, if appellants also continue their Sabbath observance by closing their businesses on Saturday; that this result will either compel appellants to give up their Sabbath observance, a basic tenet of the Orthodox Jewish faith, or will put appellants at a serious economic disadvantage if they continue to adhere to their Sabbath. "
"But, again, this is not the case before us because the statute at bar does not make unlawful any religious practices of appellants; the Sunday law simply regulates a secular activity and, as applied to appellants, operates so as to make the practice of their religious beliefs more expensive. Furthermore, the law’s effect does not inconvenience all members of the Orthodox Jewish faith, but only those who believe it necessary to work on Sunday.
In each of these cases you cite, the rights of free expression are being asserted by living, breathing, faith having people, not corporations. The analysis of each involves a personal exercise of religion, not a corporate one.
It’s not just for-profit, as the cases you point out, personal rights to free expression can be used in a for-profit sphere. And it’s not just corporations, because, as we’ve established there are religious based associations that can wield free exercise claims. But when you have for-profit corporations, those corporations don’t have free expression rights (although I should add in the world secular more often if you want.
You ask why. Because it’s a corporation, not a human being. A corporation cannot have faith. A corporation has no conscience. A corporation has no duties from its religion. A corporation has no soul. It’s a fiction, created by the law, that has no ability, no life, no religion to express. The Right to Free Expression of Religion is a personal one, one of conscience and faith. Extending it to fictional things without a soul not only makes no sense at all, but offends the very idea of the separate identity of corporations.
To sum up, Bricker believes that the Right to Free Expression in the First Amendment of the Constitution applies to for-profit, secular, corporations, and has since it was enacted, despite there being no case ever holding that.
Good luck with that.
That’s simply not true. The Supreme Court has held that the privilege against self-incrimination of the 5th Amendment does not apply to corporations, because it is a personal right, not a corporate one.
Believe it or not, corporations aren’t people. They don’t have a soul, a faith, or a belief system. And they don’t have all the rights of the Constitution, because THEY AREN’T HUMAN.
I’ll believe it when Texas executes one.
The “why” you give applies equally to non-profit corporations, Hamlet. They too are fictions created by law, aren’t they?
I am asking you why it’s only the fact that a corporation has a particular tax status that loses it the right to exercise religion. The 700 Club is not a human being, either. It has no soul. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is not a human being. But you agree those can exercise religion: “…religious based associations that can wield free exercise claims.”
Why is “for profit” tax status the key distinction?
Thanks.