SCOTUS just declined to hear the appeal of the New Mexico photographer who got sued for refusing to photograph a “commitment ceremony.”
Does this give us any insight into how they will decide Hobby Lobby et al?
Employers are not paying for contraception. Insurance is compensation. Employers have no religious freedom to control how employees use their compensation.
Very doubtful. The photographer was sued under New Mexico’s anti-discrimination law. Hobby Lobby invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s protections, but the RFRA is not applicable against the states.
So, no: the federal law that the Supreme Court is weighing in Hobby Lobby is not a law that can possibly apply to defend the New Mexico photographer’s liability under New Mexico state law.
Employers have freedom to decide what kind of compensation to provide.
But it is not secured by religious freedom. They are subject to regulation when they enter into commerce. They have to pay the minimum wage, in dollars, for instance.
Thank you. I wasn’t sure what applied to what where.
But could this refusal to hear be evidence on how they are thinking? Or is that a reach?
If anything, it suggests they’ll go the other way on HL. Roberts is very much a politician and I don’t doubt that he thinks about “splitting the vote” on this sort of thing.
Since Adaher mentioned that observant Jews can’t pay for cheeseburgers, I presume this means that if the employee of an observant Jew stays in the hospital for a broken leg and gets a cheeseburger as his meal, that the employer’s religious freedoms have been crushed?
For what it’s worth, the Wendy’s located on the grounds of Florida Hospital in Winter Park (Orlando) doesn’t serve bacon (because the hospital chain is operated by the Seventh-Day Adventists.)
It’s a huge reach.
The Court has to decide Hobby Lobby based on one fairly straightforward question: how far, if at all, does the RFRA apply to for-profit companies?
The New Mexico photographer’s case has a morass of issues: anti-discrimination statutes that burden First Amendment rights, compelled speech, photography as speech-like expressive conduct, and the general questions of how to craft balancing tests when those rights intermix. I’m not sure the Court wants to take a case like that one to clarify the law in any of those areas.
So their failure to take this case might signal their general comfort with states imposing anti-discrimination burdens that impact First Amendment expressive conduct, for instance. Or it might mean that they want to take a run at clarifying those issue but want a simpler case to do it – one in which pure speech, rather than photography-as-speech, is implicated.
But it definitely does not mean any clue about Hobby Lobby – the legal issues are simply different.
Gotcha. Having zero legal training, I was at sea about this one and my students were asking. Much appreciate the clarifying analysis.
Yes, that’s true. They have to pay the minimum wage in dollars, because the law says they do, and Congress hasn’t made any exceptions to that rule.
But in this case, they say the regulation Congress passed about providing insurance doesn’t apply to them – because Congress passed an exception that covers their situation.
So you keep bringing up the law that Congress passed forcing them to provide insurance, but never mentioning the effect of the law that Congress ALSO passed saying that it may not apply to them.
The first sentence is pure ignorance:
Is a business owner’s religious belief more important than an employee’s right to health care?
There is no right to goods and services in the Constitution. There is, however, a right to practice your religion. There’s no conflict. Religion trumps the desire of the government to have companies provide certain goods and services.
Agreed. I employ you and pay for your insurance. You are diagnosed with cancer of the Nuts. My religion says that only “God” can cure you. Good luck…
Providing insurance has always been a benefit of employment that some employers offer and others do not. A company is perfectly free to provide no insurance at all if that violates the owners’ religious beliefs.
But it appears I can provide insurance with stipulations. How’s those Nutz do’in? (C’mon adaher, I’m pulling your chain.)
All insurance has some type of “stipulations” or better known as exclusions. For example, my insurance won’t cover experimental treatment. Maybe that treatment would save my life one day, but my asshole insurance company won’t cover it? Likewise if I intentionally hit someone with my car, my auto insurance won’t pay collision coverage.
Before the ACA, all insurance coverage was voluntary. Now, a company like Hobby Lobby that has a serious religious objection to certain contraception must, by law, use their own money (not some vague tax payer dollar) to provide coverage for that procedure that violates their religious objections. That’s the case in front of the Court now and it is certainly a new idea that a person or corporation must pay out of pocket to support something that violates a religious tenet.
No one is having the right to practice their religion reduced by providing a benefit that follows the regulations for that benefit.
If an employer who is an observant Jew provides healthcare and the worker goes into the hospital and orders a bacon cheeseburger as his meal, the Jewish person hasn’t had his right to practice his religion reduced.
So you support Christian Scientists being able to provide insurance that offers nothing but prayer services?
Or new agers only providing insurance that properly aligns chakrams with crystallotherapy?
Jehova’s Witnesses’ businesses don’t provide insurance that covers blood products?
Inflicting your religion on your employees is asinine. Get rid of employer based coverage, if you want, it’s stupid. Don’t say that employers get to force others to live by their beliefs.