I seem to have missed it. I’ll reply as soon as I finish this post.
Why do you say it “clearly” was not so intended?
he Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore is a corporation. I am absolutely confident that when the RFRA was passed, the legislators voting it meant to include the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore among the entities that could claim the protections of the RFRA.
Therefore, I disagree that this in any way amounts to expanding the original reach of the law.
Not exactly. The RFRA says “person.” The Dictionary Act, 1 USC § 1, says, “…the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals…”
So it seems to me that the law answers that question. The debate has been over whether the “context” of the law was meant to include corporations, but as I mentioned in the previous post, every Catholic diocese in the country is a corporation, as are the vast majority of other churches. So there’s very little question in my mind that the “context” does not include corporations.
Again, not exactly. The issue is not beliefs, but “exercise.” Quoting the RFRA, 42 USC § 2000bb:
Yes. Exactly.
Asked and answered. The Dictionary Act says “person” = “corporation.” The RFRA was clearly intended to cover a church, even if the church was a corporation.
I don’t see a citation to the following claim:
I don’t agree. But let’s figure out where our area of disagreement is.
I say – and Hobby Lobby says – that an abortion occurs when an artificial method is used to prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in the uterine wall. Is that your understanding?
If it is, then the statement above is incorrect. IUDs cause fertilized embryos to not implant in the uterine wall. A moment’s thought would confirm this, since IUDs can be used as emergency contraception following unprotected intercourse. Cite.
The problem is that Rush and Sean and Glenn have already twisted this to be about religious freedom, and convinced their mobs that sluts are trying to infringe on the poor Christian multimillionaires’ beliefs.
Facts have nothing to do with it, and polls have nothing to do with it. If you poll people on the individual aspects of Obamacare, people love everything the law does. Ask them if they like Obamacare, and they overwhelmingly say no. The same thing is a work here. It’s totally irrational.
Just keeps getting better and better:
Can this still be about “sincerely” held beliefs or can we reliably say this is really a shot at the ACA?
I was not simply giving my opinion: I was drawing the obvious conclusion from the fact that HHS stipulated in the case that HL’s belief was held sincerely for all legal purposes. Again, if HHS thought there was any chance whatsoever of getting any legal traction on that score, it seems awfully likely they would have done so; it’s not like they are short on resources. Ergo, HL is well above the legal bar.
A meaningful responses on your part would probably include an attempt to spell out what legal argument you would make that would have invalidated their RFRA protections.
Were you not aware that before the ACA was even …um…conceived, there was a very large Christian denomination sincerely opposed to almost all contraception?
This article from March has a lot of historical background. (Bolding is mine.)
I’m sure you are aware that the motivation for the RFCA was to protect a couple of Native Americans who were fired for using Peyote in their religious ceremonies.
Despite the Rep-Dem coalition, the religious right was adamantly opposed to the RFCA.
If you have any historical background that contradicts the above quoted text, please share it.
Wouldn’t that mean that a substantial portion of those who voted for the RFRA WOULD consider the protection to cover a situation like Hobby Lobby at the time of passage? FWIW, this is the problem with attempting to figure out legislative intent - who’s intent? It was unanimously passed by the House and 97-3 in the Senate. That’s a lot of intent to sift through.
Why I vastly prefer textual readings without trying to discern what intent controls.
To expand - it is easy to look in hindsight and say, oh we never meant this when a controversial ruling comes about. But Congress has passed a lot of laws since 1947 (it may not seem like it now, but I assure you its the case!) and has known that corporations have been considered legal persons since then. You would think that if they didn’t want corporations to have rights under the RFRA, they would have realized, maybe we should actually write out corporations since in every other bill corporations are understood to be persons.
You keep using this argument about incorporated churches but I don’t see the connection. Law of incorporation is governed by the individual states. The RFRA does not apply to states (although some have their own version), therefore incorporation of churches is a specious argument.
Since I don’t agree a corporation is a person, burden upon a person’s belief (or “exercise”) is a non sequitur in regards to a corporation.
The first line of the Dictionary Act is “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise — [definitions follow]”
I believe I have shown that the context of the RFRA indicates otherwise based on historical intent and meaning.
[quote]
I don’t see a citation to the following claim:
My understanding doesn’t matter since the question is moot. The day following the Hobby Lobby decision, the Court provided further instruction to lower courts that the ruling should be applied to all contraceptives.
I also notice that Hobby Lobby has given millions to Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles. Gothard has said "mental illness is merely ‘varying degrees of irresponsibility.’ " What is to stop Hobby Lobby from refusing to pay for insurance that covers mental illness?
I totally agree. However, absent any additional information other than conjecture by SDMB members it seems to be the best data we currently have. If Time was a conservative-leaning magazine I’d be more willing to accept conjecture but I don’t see any obvious reason that Time would quote a larger loss than is warranted.
What??
My argument is very simple:
The RFRA’s context does include corporations, and did when it was passed, because churches are generally corporations.
Yes, state law governs all corporations. So what? The question is: does the context of the RFRA cover corporations? Yes. How do we know? Because when we think of who the RFRA was meant to cover, we certainly think of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington and Temple Rodef Shalom, which are both corporations.
No, you haven’t.
Historical intent and meaning shows that corporations like Temple Rodef Shalom and the Episcopal Diocese of Scranton were certainly intended to be covered by the RFRA.
No. The ruling should be applied to all plaintiffs who have a sincere religious objection to paying for contraception. This is different from a blanket waiver against covering contraception.
Hobby Lobby has no religious exercise concerns that prevents their paying for mental health coverage. Having no such religious objections, then, is what stops them.
[QUOTE=rsa]
If you have any historical background that contradicts the above quoted text, please share it.
[/QUOTE]
Nothing in that quoted text rules out corporations like churches and temples.
Not his quote, but that quote definitely leads others to report that as a fact. See:
Hobby Lobby – as reported by various media outlets that include Mother Jones – has about $73 million invested in the company that makes the Plan B morning-after pill…
I believe that writer earns the “liar liar pants on fire” award. But Mother Jones knew what they were doing when they were reporting it - the above quote is their intended result.
Perfect example. Mother Jones writes their claim in a way that’s technically defensible, but leads an ordinary reader to reach a vastly incorrect conclusion…and then other authors explicitly advance that incorrect conclusion.
And of course, now the false claim can gain even more traction, as future writers cite Reyhle’s false claim and repeat it.
"Those who are bound by our [The Supreme Court’s] decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today.
After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position. That action evinces disregard for even the newest of this Court’s precedents and undermines confidence in this institution"
From Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Wheaton College v. Burwell, which can be found here.
Sotomayor clearly thinks that the majority was lying when they said their opinion in Hobby Lobby was limited and that the religious accomodations that Alito relied so heavily on his majority opinion isn’t going to be used at all.
That sure didn’t take long.
In my view, Justice Sotomayor overstates the reliance involved. It’s true the majority opinion described the offered alternative as “achiev[ing] all the government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty.”
But so what? The standard is not to “provide greater respect” but to provide the least restrictive alternative. The majority’s opinion does not say that exemption-but-you-have-to-sign-the-form is the least restrictive alternative. It simply says that exemption-but-you-have-to-sign-the-form provides greater respect for religious liberty than no-exemption-at-all.
In this case, since the government is obligated to take the least restrictive means, and since the government already agrees that an exemption is warranted, the only question is whether there’s some compelling reason that they have to sign the form.
Is there?
One of the very reason that Alito and Kennedy gave for finding the mandate unconstitutional was that there was already a system in place for exceptions based on religious ground; that it was a least restrictive alternative.
"In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage. … according to HHS, this system imposes no net economic burden on the insurance companies that are required to provide or secure the coverage.
Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections."
Then, they decide that that system may not be the least restrictive alternative, but only AFTER they decide Hobby Lobby. When you can even be bothered to respect your own opinion for one day, it’s hard to argue we should give that opinion any respect at all.
The ruling was for an emergency injunction to stop a properly enacted law, and requires, as Sotomayor pointed out: "Injunctions of this nature are proper only where “the legal rights at issue are indisputably clear.” The burden was on Wheaton College, not on the government, to grant the injunction.
Again, the burden isn’t on the government, it’s on the petitioner, Wheaton College. They have to show that somehow requiring them to fill out a form violates their religious liberties.
That’s where the inanity of the Hobby Lobby decision really shines. Where even filling out a form to take advantage of the accomodation, is magically an infringement on their religious rights. For all the silly rationalizations Hobby Lobby raised, this one, filling out a damn form, is even more silly.
Do you honestly think that filling out a form, as required by law, actually infringes upon Wheaton College’s religious rights? We’re not even talking about the tenuousness of paying for insurance that will pay for contraception, Wheaton is pretending that even filling out a form just saying they won’t pay is somehow immoral. They’re asserting, as Sotomayor points out: “that filing the self-certification form might ultimately result in the provision of contraceptive services to itsemployees, thereby burdening its religious exercise.” They’re arguing not that they will be forced to provide contraception is the violation, they’re arguing that ANYONE providing their employees with contraception will burden their practice of religion.
You don’t really buy that, do you?
No, they never say the alternative is the least restrictive – it is simply LESS restrictive than requiring Hobby Lobby to pay.
They never decided otherwise. Nothing in their opinion identifies that alternative as the “least restrictive.”
As a simpler example, let’s imagine that the discussion was about lightest elements, with the government contending that boron was required. The majority opinion points out that the government has already approved the use of helium, which is lighter, and therefore proves that lighter alternatives are available.
Now they point out that there is also an element, hydrogen, that’s even lighter than helium.
See? The identification of a less restrictive alternative does not say or imply that it is the least restrictive.
But this is a different criticism than saying the Court’s prior opinion was almost immediately contradicted. I agree that the question of burden relating to filling out a form is not what was previously litigated. On the hand, the opinion observes, at least somewhat reasonably, that since the government is aware of the fact that the college qualifies for the exemption, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to require them to fill out the form.
They have alleged sufficient facts which, if believed, do just that.
In your opinion. Once again, I feel we need to define this, since we’re discussing what the court should do as well as your reaction. The legal standard is that the college has drawn a line, and it’s not for the court to decide that this line is “magic” or “silly.”
Yes, because you miscast their belief. They don’t believe, as you say, that “ANYONE providing their employees with contraception will burden their practice of religion.”
Instead, they believe that if they take any action, however small, to assist their employees in this regard, it violates their beliefs.
Against that, we have the government, which has already agreed to exempt them from providing coverage. Why must they sign the form? Why can’t the government note that they have refused to sign, and they’re exempt, and provide the exemption anyway?
From Kennedy’s opinion: "“The accommodation works by requiring insurance companies to cover, without cost sharing, contraception coverage for female employees who wish it. That accommodation equally furthers the Government’s interest but does not impinge on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs.”
Can’t get much more clear than that, can it?
Alito is much cagier. You can parse that quote the way you want and pretend he was only referring to the accomodation as a less restrictive means, but not least restrictive means However, if you want to believe that Alito is disingenuous enough to refer to the accommodation as a less, but not the least, restrictive means and also fail to mention any other least restrictive means, I suppose that’s possible. But your reading clearly makes Alito a weasel at the very least. But hey, it worked to get Kennedy on his side.
Again, Alito is quite good at his weaseling, but it is weaseling.
Yes, Sotomayor criticized the opinion on numerous points. And?
Yes, but again, as Sotomayor points out: “The sincerity of Wheaton’s deeply held religious beliefs is beyond refute. But as a legal matter, Wheaton’s application comes nowhere near the high bar necessary to warrant an emergency injunction from this Court.” The determination isn’t just that the belief is sincere, but also that it is substantially burdened. Again, Sotomayor: “Not every sincerely felt “burden” is a “substantial” one, and it is for courts, not litigants, to identify which are.”
Yes, they do. And do you agree with that? And if you do, what wouldn’t be a substantial burden if sending in a form is? Giving notice itself? Doesn’t that do the exact same thing as signing the form? Is requiring notice a substantial burden?