The Supremes

[cellio]

Dear SCOTUS,

Let me see if I have this right: A corporation that has a small number of shareholders, like a family, is a "person", and a corporate "person" can reject at least one legally-required expenditures it objects to on religious or moral grounds, and thus Hobby Lobby doesn't have to follow Obamacare's requirement to fund contraception. Got it.

A corporation, while maybe a "person", is clearly no more of a "person" than an actual, real live person, like me. There are legally-required expenditures that apply to me that I object to on religious or moral grounds too. So, dear SCOTUS, could you please clarify which of those I can opt out of? If Obamacare or contraception is somehow unique, please specify how. If you say that I can't opt out, why not? Surely you're not saying that, for example, Hobby Lobby has more rights as a person than I do?

(Quite aside from how you feel about any particular law, while it's a law it should apply equally -- or there should be a clear reason that cases aren't equivalent.)

Comments

[sethg]

The Supreme Court used to interpret the First Amendment to require that if a generally-applicable law impinged upon a religious practice, it was subject to strict scrutiny (much like laws that impinge on free speech or laws that smack of racial discrimination). The classic cases for this line of reasoning are Sherbert v. Verner and Wisconsin v. Yoder.

Then, in Employment Division v. Smith, the Court (in a decision written by Justice Scalia, of all people) decided that applying this level of scrutiny to free-exercise-of-religion cases was not proper, and backed away from that whole line of cases.

Then Congress said “actually, we like the standard that used to apply”, and passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which ordered the courts to interpret Federal law according to the old standard.

Then came Obamacare, and Hobby Lobby. The Hobby Lobby decision hinges on an interpretation of the RFRA, not an interpretation of the Constitution. (A boneheaded interpretation, IMHO, but at least Congress can amend the RFRA.)

Anyway, all that context is necessary for me to answer your question: even under the old constitutional standard, the courts have held that you can’t refuse to pay taxes due to religious objection. Adams v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a Third Circuit case, has a bunch of citations.

See also Tony and Susan Alamo v. Secretary of Labor: if a church raises money through commercial activity, the workers employed in that activity are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, even if they consider themselves to be volunteers and consider their work to be a kind of spiritual service.

PS: The Citizens United case makes it clear that as far as the current Court is concerned, a corporation is a person with constitutional rights (or, to be more precise: it exercises constitutional rights on behalf of its owners) regardless of how many shareholders it has. I strongly suspect that if a non-closely-held corporation underwent a religious conversion, so to speak, the Court would grant it the same deference.

PPS: IANAL.