I think we’re getting on a tangent about the privately vs. publicly owned thing. Assume instead of Microsoft, some other company which is privately owned was run by Jehova’s Witnesses.
Can they say that their insurance doesn’t cover blood transfusions?
Can a company run by Christian Scientists only offer prayer for their insurance?
Can a company run by Hindus only offer vegetarian nutritional advice for their insurance?
Can a new-age free spirit type only offer homeopathic remedies?
The law says a company has to provide insurance or pay a fine. If you own a company you need to comply with any number of laws that might run counter to your belief system. So what? There is a cutout for specifically religious institutions, like churches. If you expand it to whatever the fuck the owner believes, you have chaos.
I’m assuming you mean “without being fined under the PPACA”, in which case the answer is “we may know once this case is concluded.” But authorities have generally not permitted Muslim taxi drivers to get away with not letting service dogs in their cabs, but they do let Catholic schools fire non-religious employees for moral behavior that is considered contrary to Catholic teaching. For example in Columbus a year or so ago, a Catholic Bishop fired a lesbian teacher after it became public knowledge (through a newspaper article) that she was cohabiting with a same sex partner. Under Federal law the teacher had no redress, but Columbus city ordinance prohibited discrimination on sexual orientation. The case didn’t ultimately get resolved in court as the diocese settled with the teacher and she had to sign an NDA as part of it, so no clue on what happened (I’m assuming $$ and various pension guarantees she had earned from working there for 20+ years.) But if Federal law allows the Catholic Church to fire teachers because of their sexual orientation that tells me that where religion and employment intersect there is no guaranteed answer to any of these questions. The courts have routinely made exceptions to law for the religious on religious grounds.
But the real question is, “can they say that their religion forbids them to provide abortifacients through their health insurance plan?” Because honestly the answer to these religious issues colliding with law tend to have different answers based on the particulars, so I’m not really sure that those alternate scenarios you offer have any real relevance.
The current law allows an exemption for purely religious institutions, like Churches, or as I recall, religious schools. Isn’t that what the trumped-up Nuns vs. Obama controversy is about? They are saying that signing a paper stating they are religious objectors is too onerous. They already get that exemption, the Hobby Lobby thing is so concerning because it’s demanding that the exemption isn’t only for religious institutions, but for individual religious people. That opens the door for whatever fool notion some individual has circumventing whatever regulation he wants.
I’d venture they’re different, of course, but ultimately if you start saying that your personal religion allows you to ignore laws that go against it, it opens a real slippery slope.
By that I mean there’s ALSO a law – the RFRA – that says that any law, including the ACA, that infringes on religious practice must justify its own existence under strict scrutiny.
Is there some reason you hold the ACA up as “the law,” but ignore the RFRA?
Also, and this is interesting, Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, concluding that the First Amendment “does not require” the government to grant “religious exemptions” from generally applicable laws or civic obligations.
[QUOTE=Scalia]
The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," he wrote, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races.
[/QUOTE]
True enough – but what’s still an open question is whether the company-provided insurance is treated just like monetary wages, or whether it’s appropriate to consider it differently. Wages can be used to buy…well…anything. But company-provided healthcare insurance can only be used to provide healthcare.
So could a company refuse, on religious grounds, to fund a blanket purchase spending account at the local brothel?
And has the RFRA been constitutionally tested by the Supreme Court? I ask because just because the law is out there, doesn’t make it constitutional as was the law shown in Employment Division v. Smith. Natch.
Which brings us to another point, if a company can’t be black, could a company still be religious?
They’re not pretending anything. The 6th circuit and the 3rd circuit have both concluded (properly), that some corporations are not “people” under the RFRA. I am a bit surprised that you are unaware of those cases, or that, if you were aware, you would repeatedly try to assert that stpauler and Lobohan are pretending the RFRA doesn’t exist.
This is an incoherent post. I have no idea what you’re asking. Try again.
It’s true that 42 U.S. Code § 2000bb–1(a) says, “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability…”
But nothing in that section limits the command to natural persons.
Do you have some cite to the contrary?
And a moment’s thought will reveal that we uncritically accept that corporations have a right to religious practice. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington is a corporation. So is the 700 Club. So is the Christian Broadcasting network.
To answer what appears to be your second question, the ACA is a governmental interest because Congress says it is. Of course, that point is really one I have no interest in establishing, since it doesn’t help my argument, but it is nonetheless true. Why you should ask it is, however, kind of mysterious to me. Presumably you agree that the ACA defines a compelling governmental interest. if you don’t, then this discussion is even shorter.
I haven’t read the entire thread. Did you mention those two circuits and their rationale for finding that the RFRA does not protect corporations as people? Or was this just an game of “I know something you don’t know”?
It’s a “game,” only in the sense that having factual information to support claims made in GD is a game. I’d rather call it the raison d’etre of the forum. Your mileage, obviously, may vary.
$100, loser pays the winner’s charity. I win if Hobby Lobby’s exempt from the mandate. You win if they aren’t. If there’s some middle ground, I’ll accept your judgement on whether the bet should be a push or a win for one of us.
What year was Employment Division v. Smith decided? ANSWER: 1990.
What year was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed into law? ANSWER: 1993
(Pause for obvious conclusion: Employment Division did not rest on interpreting the RFRA, because the RFRA did not exist when it was decided…)
Again I ask: is there some reason that people commenting on this issue want to pretend that at 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb does not exist? ANSWER: I still have no idea. Maybe you can answer this one.