Posted on 11/27/2013 4:06:39 PM PST by raptor22
Rights: The Supreme Court will hear a challenge by a Christian-owned store chain against the HHS birth-control mandate that requires businesses to provide contraception coverage, a violation of religious conscience.
Some 16 months after the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare as a constitutional form of taxation, some 40 for-profit companies are about to find out its constitutionality on another front — whether they must cover some or all forms of birth control if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.
The nation's highest court has agreed to hear the federal government's appeal of a June decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court had decided the Health and Human Services Department mandate places a substantial burden on the religious freedoms of Hobby Lobby, which is solely owned by founder David Green and his family, who also own the Mardel Christian bookstore chain.
The 10th Circuit appeals judges said corporations can be protected by the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in the same manner as individuals, and "that the contraceptive-coverage requirement substantially burdens Hobby Lobby and Mardel's rights under" the law.
In a similar case decided Nov. 1, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Gilardi v. HHS that ObamaCare's contraception mandate violated the constitutional rights of Francis and Philip Gilardi, two Catholic brothers who own Freshway Foods and Fresh Unlimited.
The brothers sued to prevent having the mandate imposed on them, arguing that it violated their rights, as protected under the RFRA.
The D.C. appeals court agreed.
The mandate, according to Judge Janice Rogers, writing for a divided three-judge panel, "trammels the right of free exercise" and would force the plaintiffs to choose between bankruptcy and violating their religious beliefs.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
The headline is a bit misleading. The question the Supreme Court has chosen to address is whether a corporation has Constitutional rights under the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment. The Court has already held that corporations have rights under the free speech segment of the First Amendment, but it’s a little easier to understant how a corporation, in its own name, can engage in speech;a little harder to understand how a corporation in its own name can engage in religious observance. Of course, though Democrats don’t know this, corporations are owned by human beings, and — though Democrats don’t know this either — human beings CAN meaningfully engage in religious observance. But the line between the corporation and its human owners is the question before the Supreme Court in this case.
Hoping Judge Roberts won’t betray the American people and the Constitution again.
I have NO hope. I’ll bet that once bullied supreme court justices won’t need to be bullied again.
If the Court decides in favor of Hobby Lobby it must also decide in favor of Church’s who have employees.
This decision would put a hurt on Obamacare, since then even an individual could sue that they have religious convictions against paying for abortions and contraceptives.
I have no faith in Roberts or the Supreme Court, but there is a chance, a slim one.
If that part is found unconstitutional, the whole law falls due to not inserting a severability clause.
Unless Roberts invents it.
And I’m sure 0bama/Jarret have a plan for if this happens.
Nevertheless, I hope Supremes vote down the law.
The issue of 0bama care needs to stay in the news until election day.
Of course the best news would be for the law to be struck down.
Idiot government should not push any business to provide contraceptives to employees, they should simply require all people on the govteat plan to be child free. If that means we provide the means to stop unwanted pregnancies, then we just do it rather than have all these feral urban leeches make more welfare cases or have abortions. Just make them unable to bring more welfare into the fold.
I thought she was Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Why did IBD change her name?
-PJ
200 years ago the SCOTUS decided that a corporation was a “person” with the rights of a person, to own, contract, sell,rent buy etc. IOW do all the things that a human person could do in a legal sense. For them to decide otherwise now they would have to do a super Roberts reversal. IMHO they will find a way to do it.
Chris has decided that it doesn’t, and I’m not seeking input from anyone else.
Ping for later
I guess nobody in the lower courts ever said, “wait, you’re trying to tell us that employees can’t pony up a couple of bucks for their own voluntary sexual activities?”
I don’t really give a rat’s ass what SCOTUS has to say about it.
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(Translated from Ebonics by yours truly.)
. . . the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare as a constitutional form of taxation . . .
ObamaCare is intaxicating.
This is historically true.
The case of Schenck v. United States was decided in 1919 and was an obvious deference/capitulation to the Executive/Legislative [at the Constitution's expense]... and the supreme court is wont to cave to the politically expedient: Wickard, Kelo, Roe, Gonzalez, etc.
Possible is possible. It might be possible to get a ruling out of this that favors Hobby Lobby if the argument is (or has been) made that a religious employer courts a religious clientele. The reaction to Chik-Fil-A is a case in point. They’re trying to balance God against Satan which is ridiculous on its face.
The situation of a packable court doesn’t exist here as it existed in Roosevelt’s day. Not while the GOP holds the House and won’t expand the size of the court for Obama to pack it.
However even plan B, if painful, would be worth it in the long run. Christian firms that want to stay Christian won’t expose themselves to the vagaries of secular corporatedom, with Hobby Lobby (which I figure will probably close if losing this case [if not find some other way to sidestep, such as turning into franchises]) the cautionary tale.
God will always work around Satan, if His servants don’t shrink from suffering in God’s name. Servants who suffered will always be justified, and if their message of gospel wasn’t accepted, the wrath of God will be incurred by those who inflicted the suffering.
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