Posted on 06/06/2017 5:47:43 AM PDT by buckalfa
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday held that church-affiliated hospitals do not have to comply with the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which governs employee pensions.
Here are five things to know about the case and the high court's ruling.
1. The Supreme Court agreed in December to take up appeals filed by religiously affiliated hospital systems that were accused of underfunding their employee pension plans.
2. In three lawsuits, which were consolidated into one case, the high court was asked to decide whether the health systems can rely on their church affiliations to avoid complying with ERISA, which requires pension plans to have adequate funding to pay their promised benefits.
3. The lower courts said each of the three hospital systems — Saint Peter's HealthCare System in New Brunswick, N.J., Dignity Health in San Francisco and Advocate Health Care in Downers Grove, Ill. — misclassified their pensions as "church plans" exempt from ERISA.
4. In an 8-0 ruling issued Monday, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court decisions that could have cost the health systems billions of dollars combined. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in Monday's decision, as he joined the court after arguments were presented in the case.
5. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said ERISA's religious exemption applies to pension plans established by churches themselves and those established by organizations affiliated with churches.
"Because Congress deemed the category of plans 'established and maintained by a church' to 'include' plans 'maintained by' principal-purpose organizations, those plans — and all those plans — are exempt from ERISA's requirements," wrote Ms. Kagan.
They were SO left during odumbo's daze but are showing more conservative leanings in the Trump era.
This is why exemptions for religious organizations were even written into a law as intrusive as ObamaCare. The people who wrote the law knew damn well that the law's mandates could never stand up to scrutiny on religious grounds.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. I believe there’s been a historic trend of lopsided decisions in these religious freedom cases.
Surprising indeed. Justice Thomas has been moving the court steadily strict Constitutional siince his swearing in. Shallow intellects like Kagan are losing their activist edge. They no longer have the benefit of a cheerleader squad in the White House.
I would like to have seen the "logic" behind this lower court decision. The law says church plans are exempt, so the court decides that these aren't church plans. That's some ninth circuit logic.
Thanx ... I appreciate your words
The church (not just Catholic, but of also of most denominations) gets billions, direct from the U.S. Treasury (with no representation from the people), to resettle so-called refugees.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Left is buying cooperation of religious entities in the demise of the United States of America’s sovereignty.
Repairing the Johnson amendment and reversing a few executive orders should help a bit, if not too late.
You’ll notice, this ruling has nothing to do with discrimination as defined by Obama’s executive order 13672 which amended other executive orders: http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF14I27.pdf
If President Trump would correct Obama’s errors, we could return easily to a sane society in which all Supreme Court rulings about religious entities would result like this one did.
sorry, my formatting disappeared
The wise latina is Sotomayor, not Kagan.
Thank you for the correction and I refer you to my tag line. 👍
Interesting that this comes at a time when the other organizations exempted from ERISA (namely state government employees) are so under funded they are talking about drastic cuts in retirement benefits.
I want to know what the people who had to comply with ERISA are going to do when they are asked to to use their retirement to pay government employee retirements because they were exempted.
With all due respect to these justices, could it be that Kagan and Sotomayer are learning about the fed’s constitutionally limited powers by reading Free Republic and are going into chameleon mode?
Nah
All this ruling does is affirm a law passed by Congress in 1980 that extended the Church Plan Exemption from ERISA to Churches themselves to “principal purpose” organizations owned by churches.
The hospital plans at issue are not exempt from federal or governmental regulation. They are merely exempt from the requirements of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Plenty of provisions under the Internal Revenue Code still apply.
Patriots are encouraged to develop the habit of always checking any legislation, action, including Supreme Court decisions, of the unconstitutionally big federal government against Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, and other powers that the states have expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds.
After all, patriots cannot expect institutionally indoctrinated, state sovereignty-ignoring justices to bother with such questions.
And if no clause is found to reasonably justify legislation, action or decision, then it is probably unconstitutional.
Patriots should note that there are actually two constitutional questions associated with this front-end religious freedom case imo. The problem is that the Court seems to have unsurprisingly ignored the question of enumerated powers which will be examined in the following analysis.
To the best of my knowledge about pensions, the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the state sovereignty-ignoring feds the specific power to establish policy concerning INTRAstate pensions, same problem with healthcare, regardless of questions concerning religious protections. So the Court’s decision is once again giving the wrong impression of the scope of federal government powers.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In fact, the feds seem to unconstitutionally have their big noses into state power issues these days because of the tortured interpretation of the Commerce Clause by FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
(sarc) FDR’s activist justices found new powers for Congress that the Founding States had evidently “hidden” in the Constituton’s Commerce Clause (1.8.3). “Hero” justices were able to find these “lost” powers by reading the clause with “ACME magic reading glasses,” (such glasses now available in the Supreme Court gift shop), using these “long lost” powers to justify wrongly deciding Wickard v. Filburn in Congress’s favor imo.(/sarc)
Regarding the uncommon common sense interpretation of the Commerce Clause as the Founding States had intended for that clause to be understood, FDR’s justices wrongly ignored the clarification of that clause by a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added]." -Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So while this case is front-ended with the question of religious protections, justices are wrongly ignoring likely federal interference with state sovereignty where pensions and healthcare are concerned.
In fact, this case is arguably another example of the unconstitutionally big federal government unconstitutionally expanding its powers in subtle ways. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had warned patriots to be on their guard against such things.
”I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution (1788-06-06)
”To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” —Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791
”The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.
Also, when the states quit sitting on their hands and repeal the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, they need to include a provision in the repeal amendment which does the following.
The provision should require the courts to presume guilt of unconstitutional expansion of the already unconstitutional big federal government’s powers by the feds with respect to legislation or actions of the feds which have questionable constitutional justification.
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!
Remember in November ’18 !
Since Trump entered the ’16 presidential race too late for patriots to make sure that there were state sovereignty-respecting candidates on the primary ballots, patriots need make sure that such candidates are on the ’18 primary ballots so that they can be elected to support Trump in draining the unconstitutionally big federal government swamp.
Such a Congress will also be able to finish draining the swamp with respect to getting the remaining state sovereignty-ignoring, activist Supreme Court justices off of the bench.
In fact, if Justice Gorsuch turns out to be a liberal Trojan Horse then we will need 67 patriot senators to remove a House-impeached Gorsuch from office.
Noting that the primaries start in Iowa and New Hampshire in February ‘18, patriots need to challenge candidates for federal office in the following way.
While I Googled the primary information above concerning Iowa and New Hampshire, FReeper iowamark brought to my attention that the February primaries for these states apply only to presidential election years. And after doing some more scratching, since primary dates for most states for 2018 elections probably haven’t been uploaded at this time (March 14, 2017), FReepers will need to find out primary dates from sources and / or websites in their own states.
Patriots need to qualify candidates by asking them why the Founding States made the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I; to limit (cripple) the federal government’s powers.
Patriots also need to find candidates that are knowledgeable of the Supreme Court's clarifications of the federal government’s limited powers listed above.
A10, your insight is much appreciated.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.