More of this nonsense! Neither Citizens United nor Sibelius v. Hobby Lobby turned on the notion of corporations as juridical persons. They are both based on the principle that the owners of a corporation do not give up their political and religious rights simply by dint of having gone into business and filed incorporation papers.
It is the owners’ rights that are vindicated by both decisions, not the rights of the corporation as a juridical person.
Now let’s have a suit by a publicly-traded corporation which happens to have a majority of its equity owned by adherents of religions that object to abortion (or contraception in-toto) to extend the same right of religious freedom to its owners. (Of course at the next shareholder meeting they could vote to cover either if a majority share no longer objects.)
HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage. The employees of these religious non-profit corporations still have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contraceptives; and according to HHS, this system imposes no net economic burden on the insurance companies that are required to provide or secure the coverage.
Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections.
So Hobby Lobby's employees will be able to get the same abortifacients via the same insurer, but without Hobby Lobby paying for it. On the other hand, the insurer isn't paying for it, because this arrangement "imposes no net economic burden" on the insurer.
So the morning-after gal isn't paying for the night before, her religious employer isn't paying for it, and their insurance company isn't paying for it. Yet somehow that nine bucks a month gets paid. How? Appellate lawyer Mark Arnold:
In other words, they just add one loop or two to the procedure but the end result seems to be the same...A meaningless decision. The less restrictive alternative that the majority settled on is a certification by Hobby Lobby that it opposes contraceptive coverage, after which the insurance company must provide that coverage for free. Meaning that the premium charged to Hobby Lobby will necessarily include the cost of the free contraception. All smoke and mirrors.