I can’t wait to hear about the Walton family’s conversion to whichever religion allows them to deny employees more benefits. Anyone know which religion Koch Industries practices?
The court has, IMO, fashioned a decision which gave them their desired outcome; 'ware the unintended consequences. Mind you, I said the same thing about Congress when the RFRA was passed. It’s a stupid law and stupidly written.
The ruling only applies to closely held (i.e., not publicly traded) corporations, so Wal-Mart doesn’t qualify. Koch Industries is not publicly traded but the Kochs don’t own the whole thing, so I doubt it would extend to them. Even if it did, most Koch employees work for subsidiaries of subsidiaries. It would be pretty hard to claim that your own closely held belief applies through three corporate veils.
That’s a beautiful signature. I look forward to seeing it until Christmas Eve. 
The holding only applies to closely-held corporations. The reasoning of the ruling pretty unequivocally extends to Wal-Mart. Alito says once you concede that non-profits are protected by RFRA, the text demands that everyone is covered:
My understanding is that Hobby Lobby was primarily opposed to providing coverage for Plan B type contraceptives, which they view as a form of abortion. Could a business held by a strict Roman Catholic refuse to cover any form of contraception at all? Tubal ligation? Vasectomies?
It makes me sad, because I promised my son we would launch our model rockets on an upcoming weekend and now I have to find another retailer from which to purchase supplies.
Nitpick: A closely held corporation is one where more than 50% of the stock is owned by 5 or fewer individuals. The rest of the shares could be owned by anyone, and they could be publicly traded. There are some publicly traded, closely held corporations. Of course, the public never can own enough shares to control the company.
But I agree with your main point that Wal-Mart definitely doesn’t qualify as closely-held, and probably Koch doesn’t either.
Actual church doctrine and physical science don’t matter. All that matters it that the person (or people) in question sincerely believe something to be sinful. If they sincerely believe that using cleaning detergent violates God’s will, then they are exempt from OSHA cleaning standards so long as the government can force some third party to pay to clean up.
There is no way that Wal-Mart is more than 50% owned by 5 people, so it is not closely held.
It quite obviously isn’t closely-held. But the opinion’s reasoning is not limited to closely-held companies.
All the analysts seem to think it is.
Yes, but a publicly traded corporation doesn’t really have a license to go around adopting religious beliefs (unless for business purposes) because of its duty to stockholders.
That is the IRS’ definition, which is semi-authoritative for tax matters. There is no controlling legal definition of “closely held”, however (at least not at federal law).
Wal-Mart is a privately held, family-owned company, I thought.
How is a subsidiary of Koch Industries not also owned by Koch Industries? And why shouldn’t, following Alito’s reasoning, Koch Industries be able to impart their religious practices to all of their subsidiaries?
The next century should see a whole lot of companies getting religion, now that they can use it as an excuse to ignore laws. “Pollution Is Godliness” and “Wages Are Sin” campaigns are already being designed by the Elders of the Avarice Church of Christ, eh.
Either you or the analysts are confused, likely because many people don’t understand the difference between a holding and reasoning. A holding is the issue that court decided in the opinion. It is binding and precedential. Reasoning is the logic the court used to reach that result. Technically, it is not binding. But if there aren’t any facts or unraised legal arguments that would alter the logic, then it is pretty safe to assume that the logic will remain the same for the next case. Because the logic in this case is that “persons” means “for-profit corporations,” and because none of the logic limited the reasoning to closely-held corporations, it follows that there is no basis on which to distinguish the holding of Hobby Lobby from the holding of a future Wal-Mart case.
The other potential basis for confusion is the factual likelihood of Wal-Mart shareholders sharing a common religious belief. The notion is that in a sufficiently largely corporation, they are not likely to agree on any particular religious tenet. We’ll see if that empirical claim holds or not, but it has nothing to do with whether Wal-Mart is indeed covered by the reasoning of this decision.
Alito expressly rejected that argument as a basis for distinguishing RFRA. It might get the corporation in trouble under state corporate law, I guess. But I doubt it.
This is not a constitutional decision – it’s an application of the RFRA. If Congress feels that the extant version of the RFRA is producing undesirable results, Congress can modify or eliminate the RFRA.
But the examples you mention would likely fail even in the current environment, because the beliefs in question must be sincerely held. Do you believe that requirement to be meaningless?
A closely held corporation is defined by the IRS as:
See post 551. Alito seems to have used the definition “owned by a single family”.
Wal-Mart is a family owned company, but about half of the company’s stock is publicly traded. The Waltons retain controlling interest but only as a group (and there are a lot of them.)
The general basis for the Court’s holding is that religious people shouldn’t be penalized merely because they have chosen to adopt the corporate form. In the case of a closely held corporation, the corporation is essentially a fiction - it’s just a piece of paper that the owners all own a piece of which protects them from personal liability.
There is no reason to extend the court’s logic beyond the first corporation. The Kochs will be free to do business in accordance with their [del] pact with Satan [/del] sincerely held religious beliefs under the Koch Industries name.
I believe that requirement to be void of any meaningful way of assessing it, to the point of it being assumed by the court without requiring said beliefs to be attested to or proven they were held. Why should I think, given the precedents I can examine, that the courts won’t simply assume that claims of “sincerely held” beliefs are factual every time they are presented to the court?
Bravo. This is funny