NYTimes: Limiting Rights: Imposing Religion on Workers

[spanone]

Last edited Tue Jul 1, 2014, 04:55 PM - Edit history (1)

The Supreme Court’s deeply dismaying decision on Monday in the Hobby Lobby case swept aside accepted principles of corporate law and religious liberty to grant owners of closely held, for-profit companies an unprecedented right to impose their religious views on employees.

It was the first time the court has allowed commercial business owners to deny employees a federal benefit to which they are entitled by law based on the owners’ religious beliefs, and it was a radical departure from the court’s history of resisting claims for religious exemptions from neutral laws of general applicability when the exemptions would hurt other people.

The full implications of the decision, which ruled in favor of employers who do not want to include contraceptive care in their company health plans, as required by the Affordable Care Act, will not be known for some time. But the immediate effect, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in a powerful dissent, was to deny many thousands of women contraceptive coverage vital to their well-being and reproductive freedom. It also invites, she said, other “for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faiths.”

The case involved challenges by two companies, Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet maker, to the perfectly reasonable requirement that employer health plans cover (without a co-payment) all birth control methods and services approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The main battleground was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which says government may not “substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion” unless the burden is necessary to further a “compelling government interest” and achieves it by “the least restrictive means.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/the-supreme-court-imposing-religion-on-workers.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

[WinkyDink]

1. The SCOTUS ruled arse-backwards, agreeing 5-4 that the imposed-upon party was the Green family; that

THEY, in fact, had THEIR religion imposed upon by a govt forcing THEM to provide something to others that they personally and, if they are to be believed, spiritually opposed to---EVEN THOUGH THE GOVT WAS NOT FORCING THE GREENS THEMSELVES ACTUALLY TO USE THAT SOMETHING.

In sum, the SCOTUS ruled that Hobby Lobby's owners could deny to unrelated employees of unknown personal and spiritual beliefs any service or benefit that did not square with those of those owners.

This finding NOW imposes BY LAW one's religious beliefs on others by denying them the full benefits of a SECULAR LAW.

Thus, this SCOTUS has NOT ONLY just legalized the abrogation of the First Amendment by private enterprise; it has done so by allowing the cherry-picking of obedience by a class of employers to the LAW of the LAND, in this case, the ACA.

The racist families who owned small diners in the 1960's South are cheering in their graves.

[SomethingFishy]

3. That's how I see this too... We just officially became a "Christian Nation"...

This is epic. The highest court in the land just gave America an official religion. What I find sad is most of the animosity is towards Hobby Lobby, and for some odd reason Ralph Nader, instead of the Supreme Court Justices who just brazenly and openly violated the constitutional rights of every single American. I mean Hobby Lobby had the right to file the suit, after all this is America, and as we all know nothing in America is protected as much as your right to be a fucking moron. But their suit should have been laughed out of court.

You follow the logic of this decision to it's end and you see nothing good can come of it.

[WinkyDink]

4. I totally agree. The HL family, like ALL Americans, an irony I'm sure has escaped them, had their

rights. And yes, the SCOTUS should have guffawed, 9-0.

[spanone]

5. i believe you have it right.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. 5 wanna-be Theocrats in black robes.

[alfredo]

6. Privatizing theocracy