That’s really a kind of deceptive article, making a claim in a deceptive way.
The court issued orders in pending cases that basically said, “Our reasoning applies in this case.” If next term the Supreme Court confronts Utah’s same sex marriage and rules consistent with Windsor that a same- sex marriage ban is unconstitutional, that decision will apply to other marriage equality cases, and we would certainly expect the court to issue orders reflecting this.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court decided that the RFRA applied to closely-held for-profit companies, and so any case that was hinging on the question, “Does the RFRA apply to closely-held for-profit companies?” must apply it.
It’s true that some of these other cases involve a more comprehensive objection to all contraception, instead of Hobby Lobby’s objection to only four methods. The Greens, Hobby Lobby’s owners, are not Catholic: their objection was to anything that causes the death of a fertilized embryo, not to preventing ovulation or fertilization. But. Catholic doctrine does object to artificial methods of preventing conception, and so there are Catholic business owners also suing HHS.
So…the Court’s decisions always “expand,” because the Court’s decisions don’t just resolve one case: they announce an authoritative way of interpreting the law that applies to the whole country.
The other somewhat deceptive (in my opinion) point comes from the article’s suggestion that the Supreme Court’s opinion leaves courts helpless to reject a fabricated religious claim. This echoes a refrain I have heard a lot here on the SDMB, along the lines of, “What if I say my religion forbids hiring redheads? What then?”
Here’s the article’s text:
The article goes on to claim explicitly that the main problem with Alito’s opinion in Hobby Lobby is that it takes claims of religious scruples for granted.
But that’s not true. In Hobby Lobby’s case, they had plenty of evidence of their genuine religious exercise, but more importantly the government chose to stipulate it’s sincerity. In other words, they agreed that Hobby Lobby was sincere. And this was a reasonably wise concession. The case was intended to test whether or not the RFRA applied to a for-profit. Even if we imagine that Hobby Lobby was faking it, clearly there exists some employer somewhere with sincere beliefs, so the question would have to be settled anyway. And of course, no one seriously questioned Hobby Lobby’s sincerity anyway.
But that doesn’t mean that somehow, as a result of this decision, no claims of sincerity from other parties can ever be questioned. I earlier posted multiple examples showing courts rejecting claims of religious exercise that they found were phony. The question of whether a claim is sincere is a question of fact for the trial court to accept or reject.
In response, some people (here and elsewhere) seem genuinely baffled at the idea. “A court cannot peer into a person’s mind!” they cry.
But that’s exactly what courts do every day. Every claim of self-defense must be evaluated by what sincere thoughts were in the accused’s mind. The success of a charge of first-degree murder depends on what intent the defendant harbored. Few people seem surprised at that – but for some reason, this application of that well-known principle in this case seems to confuse people, even after being given specific examples of courts deciding that religious claims were self-serving and false.