Well, a person can exercise a religion they don’t have. A pagan, or a Sikh, or an atheist, could go into a church, pray, sing hymns, share the peace, do missionary work, whatever they liked. So could a corporation, although it would need to send a representative to be physically present in the church.
Of course. I sue the Times, and I don’t sue the reporter or editor.
And if you win, it’s the stock holders who are punished.
But their paper is organized as a corporation. If their corporation has no recourse to the First Amendment as a defense, then I sue it. The editors and reporters, in the own person, I don’t sue. But the corporation is publishing the statements (whatever they are) that aggrieved me.
If the corporation is immune because all it’s doing is exercising the First Amendment rights of its owners…then the other corporation is exercising the religion of ITS owners.
True?
Not personally. They are “punished” in the sense that the corporation loses money. But their personal holdings are not at risk.
That’s the entire point of a corporation. It’s a separate person. I sue it and win, then it pays me. The stockholders “lose” only because their investment becomes less valuable, not because they have to pay me.
When the New York Times sought to publish the Pentagon Papers, the government ordered them to stop.
The corporation went into court and claimed a First Amendment right to publish the information. They did not say, “Well, sure, you can order the corporation to stop. Our editors and reporters will publish this stuff ourselves.”
And the Court ultimately agreed with the Times.
Are you, Jack, now saying that ruling was bullshit?
Then why did the majority in Hobby Lobby limit itself to just the incredibly vague “closely held” corporations, and go out of their way to specifically say the ruling would not apply to all public corporations, like Sullivan would?
That would have been ober dicta. HHS argued that there would be problems ascertaining the “beliefs” of large, publicly traded corporations, but the Court had only to dispose of that claim by observing it did not apply to the current case. No party in the case was a large publicly traded corporation. No one was arguing that view.
As a general rule, the larger and public-er a corporation becomes, the more diluted the religious beliefs of its owners become, so the corporate form naturally mitigates against many such claims. But if a large, publicly traded corporation structures itself to exercise religion, in conformance with state law concerning the establishment of charter and corporate structure, then the RFRA certainly would apply, and presented with such a case, the courts would rule accordingly.
It’s not clear to me at all that I am in error.
If I am convinced I’m wrong, I’ll acknowledge it. If your ‘of course, as always,’ is meant to apply to me, find an instance of me running and hiding from an error or STFU.
Do you agree that federal law says that the word person includes corporations?
As a polite legal fiction, intended to simplify certain legal procedures. As a legal dogma, a leap of corporate faith, that flies in the face of ordinary common sense? Maybe not so much. But I will cede your point, indeed, it stands as legal and Constitutional. Being crazier than a duck on acid has no bearing on the matter.
If the Board had one hundred fervent anarchists, they couldn’t come close to undermining respect for the law as much as you have, Counselor.
We have differing definitions of “dispose”. Hand waving a conclusion based on the application of the same logic the court used did not “dispose” of the argument. Anymore than the majority opinion “disposed” of the idea that RFRA was never intended to apply to for-profit corporations.
But we’ve danced the Hobby Lobby dance before, and I can’t imagine we’d tread any new ground. I’ll go ahead and leave you to cherry pick responses from non-lawyers that allow you indulge the smug, lecturing tone you love.
There is no need to get hung up on the word “person”. It’s a term of art. Like many such terms, it takes a commonly used word and confirm upon it a new, precise and legal meaning. We could call them “Squishy-Squashies” and accomplish the same necessary purpose.
I do agree that “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise,” yes, person includes corporation.
We would in fact be accomplishing the same purpose far more efficiently, since lawmakers who speak colloquial English would be much less likely to accidentally use the word “squishy-squashies” when trying to pass a law about the behavior of actual people.
Exactly as I understand it. However, to take the word “person” and apply a whole new definition to it, and then insist that it also absorbs the commonly understood definition is semantic sophistry.
As the recent saying goes, I’ll believe that a corporation is a “person” just as soon as Texas executes one.
Applesauce, sir! Applesauce!
With that in mind, how does a strict constructionist NOT find that a corporation is a person? Yes, there’s the “context” caveat, but your complaint was that Scalia was a strict constructionist except when he needed to find that corporations were people. A strict constructionist is not the one that starts exploring context.
And I’m sure people think they are being very clever when they say that.
Well, it’s relatively clever. After all, we deny the right to vote to persons who are corporations.
(I actually heard a right wing hate radio commentator argue that corporations should have the right to vote.)