Kennedy is irrelevant...all they need is Roberts, and he’s already in the bag.
The government lawyer is correct. Corporations have no religious freedom, because they are creations of the government - not God.
Human beings have religious freedom. Human beings working together in a business have religious freedom.
But a corporation? That’s a paper person - and that’s what all these laws address.
Watching the entire population of the country refuse to grapple with this difference and constantly get smacked by the very thing they refuse to acknowledge is depressing as hell.
Citizens United Sept 2009:
“Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: “A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests.” Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are “indistinguishable from the individual who owns them.”
These are the guys who’ve been complaining that “wingnuts” were misinterpreting Obie’s “you didn’t make that” speech, right.
One of the most successful lines of attack against these Constitutionally enumerated rights has been to restrict their coverage in various incremental ways. Examples of this are rife... when head-on attempts to eliminate the right to bear arms came to grief, the incrementalists went after particular catagories of firearms, particular types of gun accessories, particular types of ammunition, etc.
Another attack of this type has been to restrict the venues in which the First Amendment could operate. This started (it can be argued) with the famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" formulation of Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck v. United States.
In the last few decades, the left has succeeded in setting up precedents for the idea that the Freedom of Speech -- arguably the most revered of all the rights we are guaranteed by the Constitution -- ceases to operate the moment a person passes through the doors of a business. A group of businessmen gives up their right to speak freely in the public square, apparently because of the possibility that their financial means might make it possible for them to purchase a particularly powerful megaphone.
The restriction of this freedom does not apply to the management of labor unions, or of large philanthropies, or (it goes without saying) to members of the various media organizations and members of the government.
In its decision in the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to this back-door movement to restrict our freedoms, but the Left is not giving up. They feel an instinctive drive to control speech in the public square, at least when that speech comes from directions that they think will inconvenience them.
all business exists for the benefit of the state, then.
time to start the revolt if they win. can’t live free under such a wicked, twisted government.
we’ll make some extra needed changes to the constitution to prevent such tyranny from occurring again. no justices for life. term limits on all fed offices. no alphabet agencies with any power to create regs with the power of law. no hundreds of thousands of armed federal agents. back to dc limits for them.
I think we'll see Breyer going with the majority this time. It will be 6-3, boys against girls.
Yes, there’d be a huge fine, a tax, leveled by the government, But by the government sticking their nose in, they may take all insurance away from all Hobby Lobby employees, which the owners of Hobby Lobby say they have always wanted to provide, even before the ACA. Yet the dems are so pig headed and stuck on abortion, a few murdering drugs MUST be covered at all costs. Obama doesn't care about women or the employees at hobby lobby. He cares about control. My daughter needed braces for medical (jaw) reasons not for vanity reasons. Our plan covered $1900 of the $6,000 cost. She's a female that had a pressing health concern. But it wasn't in our plan and isn't a right so we paid.
It sure seems that the Obama regime is doing what it can to prohibit the “free exercise” of religion by business owners. I’m just as sure that business owners didn’t realize they were giving up their 1st Amendment rights when they chose to conduct business with the public. Government is treating private business like it is an entity owned by government.
When free people are denied the right to act responsibly in accordance with good conscience and long established moral values, government has failed.
Let’s let Roberts pay for everyone’s contraception because he likes Obamacare so much.
So individuals all across the country need to sue the Obama admin over the lack of insurance options for individuals who have a conscience? Congress made a law that does not allow individuals to purchase insurance without abortion coverage. They made a law that taxes religious liberty because if you refuse health insurance, you are taxed.