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William769

(55,124 posts)
Tue Mar 18, 2014, 03:35 PM Mar 2014

U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases relating to employers’ religious beliefs

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases next week that test the degree to which employers may use their personal religious beliefs to deny certain health coverage for employees. Neither case involves any LGBT-related health coverage; but the decisions in both may affect whether employers will be able to cite religious beliefs to deny such services as alternative insemination and gender reassignment.

The cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood v. HHS, involve employers asserting religious beliefs as grounds for denying health insurance coverage for birth control. Both take issue with the Affordable Care Act. Hobby Lobby challenges the ACA implementing regulations that require employer health coverage plans provide women on their plans with the “full range” of “contraceptive methods.”

Those regulations also authorize an exemption for “religious employer” and “religious non-profit organizations that have religious objections to providing coverage for some or all contraceptive services.”

“A religious employer,” noted HHS’s brief to the Supreme Court, “is defined as a non-profit organization described in the Internal Revenue Code provision that refers to churches, their integrated auxiliaries, conventions or associations of churches, and the exclusively religious activities of any religious order.”

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/03/u-s-supreme-court-to-hear-cases-relating-to-employers-religious-beliefs/

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U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases relating to employers’ religious beliefs (Original Post) William769 Mar 2014 OP
Once we get religion in the fiction category where it belongs Politicalboi Mar 2014 #1
It scares the heck out of me that this is in the hands of SCOTUS. sheshe2 Mar 2014 #2
I'm hoping sanity rules the day in this case and this argument is put to rest. William769 Mar 2014 #3
Think of the implications. Geoff R. Casavant Mar 2014 #4
Kick! sheshe2 Mar 2014 #5
 

Politicalboi

(15,189 posts)
1. Once we get religion in the fiction category where it belongs
Tue Mar 18, 2014, 03:45 PM
Mar 2014

This kind of shit will never happen again.

sheshe2

(83,319 posts)
2. It scares the heck out of me that this is in the hands of SCOTUS.
Tue Mar 18, 2014, 03:56 PM
Mar 2014

The court is stacked with some ugly individuals. However one can hope.

I agree that a good ruling would help the LGBT community as well. In fact it could help any issue that an employer deems to be against their "Religious" sensibilities. Sadly they have no intention of stopping there.

Geoff R. Casavant

(2,381 posts)
4. Think of the implications.
Tue Mar 18, 2014, 04:05 PM
Mar 2014

Could a Jehovah's witness employer deny coverage for blood transfusions?

A Christian Scientist employer deny coverage for . . . well, anything?

Heck, a Muslim employer deny coverage for certain types of food poisoning, since if you hadn't eaten that pork you wouldn't have gotten trichinosis in the first place?

Or to take the level of absurdity even more stratospheric, I'm sure there's a line in the Flying Spaghetti Monster scripture -- and if there isn't, there really needs to be -- that would allow a sincere FSM practitioner to deny insurance coverage for anyone who voted Romney in 2012 ("And lo, by all the noodles I say to thee, thou shalt not be hospitable to any who cast their lot with the well-coiffed bland soulless one from the state of bays in the year of the Mayan apocalypse." - Fusilli 3:16).

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