Not laughing anymore: a court finds a for-profit company can claim religious liberty
by digby
You’ll all recall the brouhaha over religious institutions being required to provide contraception coverage. The administration compromised and the issue seemed to go away. But it didn’t. Sarah Posner has been following the story of arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby and its quest to claim that these provisions of the ACA violate its freedom of religion:
In February of 2012, as the Obama administration sought to placate the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) objections to contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act, a new wrinkle in the debate took observers by surprise. Anthony Picarello, the USCCB’s general counsel, protested that exemptions and accommodations for churches and religious charities didn’t go far enough. “If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell,” Picarello said, “I’d be covered by the mandate.”
This was the first time one of the religious objectors to the proposed regulation had raised the prospect of an exemption for for-profit, corporate entities. “We thought it was laughable at the time,” says Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed amicus briefs in support of the government’s position in lawsuits later brought by for-profit companies. “I’m not laughing anymore.”
Last month, in the first appellate decision in these cases, the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby and its affiliated chain of Christian bookstores, Mardel. The court found that corporations have the standing to sue under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and have free-exercise rights under the First Amendment. “A religious individual may enter the for-profit realm intending to demonstrate to the marketplace that a corporation can succeed financially while adhering to religious values,” a majority of the court’s full en banc panel of eight judges wrote. “As a court, we do not see how we can distinguish this form of evangelism from any other.”
Read the whole piece to get the full flavor of the implications here. This will undoubtedly go to the Supreme Court but the principle at play is quite disturbing. If the owners of private companies can claim a “religious liberty” exemption for federal laws they believe violate their beliefs we are opening up a huge can of worms. And from what we’ve seen, this is exactly the kind of case that makes Justice John Roberts twirl his (metaphorical) mustache.
.