Posted on 06/30/2014 11:43:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The left has been… animated in their objections to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case which declared the mandate in the Affordable Care Act which forced employers to provide employees with abortifacients drugs over their religious objections to be unconstitutional.
In spite of what many have characterized as the narrow and tailored ruling by the Court, some political and legal observers have determined that the ruling is a step toward the legalization of discrimination.
One of the more creative arguments in this direction was submitted by NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. On Monday, she suggested that the Court has created a legal pathway for employers to discriminate against their employees on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and even national origin.
Totenberg summarized Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote a concurring opinion in favor of the decision to strike down the mandate: “Don’t worry,” she said. “As long as I’m here, the floodgates won’t open and it won’t be hundreds and hundreds, and thousands and thousands of companies saying ‘Why me?’”
She went on to say that a future Court could rule that it was legal to not hire based on sex if the employer asserted that it violated their religious belief. “Or cases involving gays and lesbians,” she added. “Or cases involving people from different foreign origins. It’s just not clear.”
Federal Equal Opportunity Employment laws are clear that discrimination based on those guidelines is already prohibited. Furthermore, given that the decision was intentionally narrowly tailored to apply only to emergency contraceptives, as opposed to, say, vaccines, it seems unlikely that Totenberg’s nightmare scenario could materialize.
For his part, George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said on CNN on Monday that this decision the “flip side” to Citizens United; one extended speech rights to corporations, and this ruling extends religious freedom to some corporations. He added that decisions like that which prohibited an Arizona baker from refusing to provide his service to same-sex couples must now be revisited.
It would seem to me that failing to provide an employee a narrow set of health coverage benefits and flatly refusing to provide a service to a customer based on their identity are dramatically different situations. It seems like a stretch, but there is no doubt that emotions are running hot today.
Progressives are hysterical. Literally.
Gee, I aways assumed that xenophobia racism were legal before this anyhow.
Awesome! The more hysterical they get, the funnier they become.
And “Xenophobia” was never illegal.
From the looks of things I think a little discrimination would be good medicine...
wait till the mines start going off in the obamacare mine field..
Their heads may explode..
not that that is a bad thing.. but only conservatives will be around to clean up the mess.
The US Supreme Court’s decision is such a limited decision with regard to Hobby Lobby that neither side can “extend it” very far ... :-) ...
Right now it’s just being used for “political capital” by both sides and not much more!
Where are these anti-Hobby Lobby decision homoprobes coming up with their xenophobia and racist bull****? They sound as though they’ve been doing way too much recreational “medical” marijuana.
I think when conservatives go on TV and get pounded about this from the left wing media, they should remind them over and over and over about the fact that women can go out and buy contraception for less than 20 bucks and that abstention is actually free....
True! A never ending source of amusement....and WORRY!
I know a lot of FReepers want to gloat over the reaction from the Left. Don’t. Don’t act like them. We can be happy that some measure of sanity was found in this opinion, partial as it was, but we should never “nyaa nyaa” the Left just because sanity prevailed. Be somewhat magnanimous in victory by being appropriately dignified and adult. Highlight the contrast between the two world views.
How dare people be allowed to think and choose for themselves, they must be FORCED by the almighty government.
Interesting that Hobby Lobby pension fund invests in companies that make contraceptives according to mother jones.
Watching idiot friends and colleagues on Facebook is more embarrassing than funny. We live among proud ignoramuses.
Women are being ‘discriminated’ against and corporations have no rights.
Note To Leftists:
Xenophobia and Racism are also legal.
“The ruling is a step toward legalization of discrimination.”
Setting aside the fact that no law can force me to accept what I refuse to accept, I certainly HOPE this starts a movement toward greater discrimination. There as a time when being “a person of discriminating taste” was a compliment. The opposite of discriminate is indiscriminate. I’d much rather live in a society that applies an appropriate level of discrimination in its values than one that blindly accepts all values as equal.
So are pigheadedness, communism and belief in global warming.
They be cheering if Hobby Lobby was Islamic...
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