Let’s say they’re in a jurisdiction that requires stores to close on Sunday. Being Jewish, they are happy to be open Sunday, but are closed Friday evening and Saturday. They sue to be allowed to stay open Sunday, citing their religious exercise rights.
Stores decide when to be open and what to sell, every store decides that. Why they choose it is irrelevant. (and yes, I already knew that)
With the Crown Kosher reference, I take it you mean the blue laws case in 61? If so, I agree with them that blue laws shouldn’t exist. I don’t care about their religious rationale, but those laws are asinine.
I’m thinking this may be a Kelo v. New London style decision; that is, it ignited a firestorm of controversy, but had little practical impact.
In response to Kelo, many states passed laws or state constitutional amendments that forbade using eminent domain for the benefit of private corporations. Since the Hobby Lobby decision hinges on the RFRA, which does not restrict state laws, might it be possible for a state to pass a law restricting the religious rights of corporations to non-profit corporations with a declared religious purpose?
But since the issue here is the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) which is a federal law, I don’t really see how that helps all that much.
But yes: since the federal RFRA is not applicable to the states, a state could restrict the rights of corporations as you suggest. But that wouldn’t change their obligations under the federal ACA.
Antinor, pretty much all of your posts in this thread consist of you just announcing what you feel the correct answer to every social policy question is.
But the reason Hobby Lobby was on the hook to pay for contraceptives was a federal law, the ACA. The reason they fought back was they felt another federal law, the RFRA, protected them.
I guess I was hoping that you would consider the existence of those laws and and reason out what they required. I’d say that if your approach is simply to state what you believe the best overall result would be, without reference to any existing laws, then have at it.
But do you have any reason, other than your own preferential result, for saying that a non-profit can exercise religion but a for-profit cannot? Like, a law, or something?
I would agree with the dissent in this case. Specifically -
It’s not a law of course, it’s just Justice Ginsberg announcing what she feels is the correct answer. She even notes that for profit companies have never been extended RFRA protection.
cite?
Chick Fil A doesn’t seem to be hurting from being closed Sundays and eating is more necessary on Sunday than buying hobby supplies.
So? They choose what to sell as any company does and they choose what transportation arrangements they want. While Hobby Lobby used your two examples as evidence of their strong religious belief system, what about their retirement plan with investments in makers of contraceptive devices, including those that they are supposedly so opposed to.
There is a big difference in making operational decisions and having a policy which affects their employees. Don’t conservatives believe in a “right to work” without being penalized by having to pay for medical coverage that employees of other companies receive. What if there were a religious objection (which there may well be) to paying the federal or state minimum wage. Surely you don’t think there is any compelling interest in requireing some arbitrary wage to be paid to employess.
I am less than impressed with this opinion. It takes pains to clearly state that this is a narrow ruling, applicable to only this situation. However, it never actually explains why the logic it applies to this situation is invalid in others. For example, the ruling says:
However, the logic for the ACA failing RFRA is this:
That exact same logic can be applied to vaccinations. Why couldn’t government assume payment for vaccinations the same as it could for contraception? Or to take the racism/sexism angle, can the government really prove that current laws are the least restrictive way of addressing inequality? For example, can they prove that substantial tax breaks to corporations employing minorities is less effective than current laws? It seems doubtful to me that they can.
The government should have questioned the sincerity of their belief. Starts to get at the whole problem of having the courts decide what is a sincere belief…especially as it relates to a corporation.
So a corporation with a religious but non-charitable purpose cannot have a religious belief while a corporation with a religious and charitable purpose can?
This is not the inevitable result of the constitution but as Bricker pointed out to me earlier on, it is almost the very likely result of the RFRA (in the absence of the RFRA, I think Hobby Lobby loses).
So we can make the church pay for contraception coverage for its clergy?
So churches cannot have sincerely held religious beliefs?
I suspect Hillary will nominate from the same short list as Obama would.
Its been a while since law school but IIRC con law was mostly trying to figure out what the justices had for breakfast that morning.
Are you asking me to cite the proposition that a store that closes one day a week loses sales?
What about it? Their retirement fund contains a dozen mutual funds; one mutual fund contains thousands of different company stocks. They view that as much mire distant and attenuated than directly funding contraception insurance. And of the twenty types of contraception approved by HHS they object to only four.
On the contrary, there’s a clear compelling interest in a government minimum wage.
Nor could you use the broadcast airwaves and avoid those fees.
The hook there is the use of public airwaves, and the FCC doesn’t limit their rules to corporations. In fact, Howard Stern got in trouble. As you just said.
