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

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I should also mention: the courts specifically DO NOT get terribly into whether a religious belief is sincerely held nor even whether it is doctrinally consistent with the views of their church-of-affiliation.

Notable in this case is that the US did not question whether the belief was sincerely held, so the question was never challenged. If it had been, I suspect it would have been upheld.

There must be SOME evidence that this is a sincerely held belief: I suspect that the founding papers of Hobby Lobby probably contained something that could have been used as evidence.

[eub.livejournal.com]

What is the "this" that is a sincerely held religious belief, though? The religious belief that abortion is a sin, sure, that's a thing. But we are not actually dealing with abortion here according to what a court would determine as fact. It appears that the Hobby Lobby owners are relying on a religious belief whose content is that certain methods of birth control prevent implantation. I would see a real question, not whether that's sincerely held, but whether the belief is religious in nature. I am interested to read the decision to see how the Court navigated this distinction.

(The belief that contraception is a sin, that's certainly a thing too, and the Court also issued several decisions relating to Catholic business owners objecting to contraception in general. But the Hobby Lobby owners were specifically objecting to certain methods, while okaying others, so they're not in a position to lean on that belief.

And not saying this is legally material in itself but I find it fairly remarkable: the "mini-Pill" is okay, "Plan B" is not; both are levonorgestrel, though the doses and product labeling differ. My recollection, actually, is that the sources that suggested that either would prevent implantation would suggest it of both of them. If one is to sail past factual questions in a religious belief, is it now a religious belief that Plan B can prevent implantation and hormonal contraception can't?)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

We can debate what the thisness of this is, but in actual practice, the owners of Hobby Lobby claim a sincerely held religious belief, and no one is questioning their belief (within the legal system: LJ, who knows?)

I can't debate their beliefs for them, and do not wish to. Smart, stupid, vapid: who knows?

[eub.livejournal.com]

*Did* they, in actual fact, claim a religious belief with content about the behavior of zygote implantation? Or did the court in essence decide that arbitrary non-religious belief co-occurring with religious belief is treated as religious for this purpose? I have not read enough of the decision to know; have you by any chance?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Press reports suggest that the owners testified to their shared beliefs for the record, but again, were not challenged on whether those beliefs were sincere.

[eub.livejournal.com]

the courts specifically DO NOT get terribly into whether a religious belief is sincerely held

They also would rather not judge the legitimacy of religious practices themselves, but in practice that's what they do, to avoid turning the RFRA into a complete anything-goes card. De facto it matters whether your religion and its sacramental practice is sufficiently accepted (e.g. practiced by five or more members of the bench), and this is why Rastafarians don't get to smoke ganja. (Although, Santo Daime members do get to use DMT, so it's not that it's "mainstream only".) This all somewhat tangential, perhaps, but frankly I think it does have some bearing on how they'd treat Catholicism versus Christian Science, for one hypothetical people have raised.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Is been a long time since I read about the cases involving Rastamen but I don't recall religious legitimacy being key to the decision. As I recall it was more closely related to the perception that the government was actually using the least restrictive means to control drug enforcement.

I have opinions about this case and that one but I'm trying to keep me out of it.


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