If one uses the recent Supreme Court ruling on prayer at a city council meeting in Greece,NY as a guide, the issues in that decision have some bearing.
1. The town provided opportunity for all sides to pray. This was important to justice Kennedy.
2. Kennedy spoke for a traditional, Founders era, definition of tolerance. He said that being oneself rather than being some government mandated neutral religion was true tolerance, that otherwise it was the government imposing itself on religion rather than the town of Greece violating separation of church and state. That the town (see #1) gave wide opportunity to pray was an example of tolerance.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the Green family doesn’t want to pay for items that violate their personal religion, although they will pay for other types of contraception.
First, the government hasn’t demonstrated some overriding government interest that this violation of the Green’s religion is absolutely the only was this can be handled. The government has handed down a huge number of exemptions, so trying to paint this as critical is a nice bit of drama, but it isn’t convincing.
Second, the notion that Hobby Lobby is a violation of church and state separation is belied by the court’s decision that tolerance means that one should expect to see differences in America. After all, we have lots of religions, since denominations are, in effect, different religions. Mitigating this, as with the above Greece, NY case, the people have many contraceptive choices available to them. No one is preventing them from receiving or using contraception. In fact, the company provides most forms of contraception, and the company imposes no restrictions on employees who use those methods to which it objects. Employees are free to do so on their own. (This is not the place to discuss the ridiculousness of a health insurance policy covering personal items. Why not tooth paste? Why not require car insurance to cover oil changes?)
Finally, is a corporation entitled to have a position on issues? That is actually a silly question since corporations already have positions on all kinds of issues. Some people are fired for their beliefs and some are hired for their beliefs. Corporations definitely have principles and beliefs.
So, how is that determined? Apparently, the group entrusted by the stockholders to lead the company arrive at a consensus opinion.
For the Green’s, that consensus opposes life-taking contraception. That is the corporation’s position. Is that really any different that other organizations having principles from which they operate? No. Therefore, leave the Green’s alone.
They are one among many organizations that operate on their principles. Tolerance, according to Justice Kennedy, means that we ‘tolerate’ differences.
XZ, it is not the position of Kennedy that I worry about. It’s Chief Justice Roberts.
Ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby effectively kills Obamacare because of the intentional refusal to put a severance clause in the law. Ergo, I fear another taffy twisting effort at bizarre logic from Roberts to keep Obamacare alive. In that case, Hobby Lobby is screwed.