Posted on 06/30/2014 7:56:54 AM PDT by Enlightened1
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a key regulation in President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation is illegal as applied to millions of Americans of faith, as well as their businesses or organizations.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Lurking Libertarian: I don't agree with you about Slaughterhouse, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this thread: the Fourteenth Amendment has zero to do with today's case, which involves a federal, not a state, statute.
Not quite - the Hobby Lobby is incorporated at the State level. Thus the definitions involving its identity and existence are reached by the 14th, which in turn describes its relationship with the RFRA. So while it's not a ruling directly dependent on the 14th, the arguments and justifications of the decision are dependent on the 14th, which also describes federal definitions as well. Of all the Amendments, the 14th sits squarely across the federal-State boundaries, in effect uniting them in one extended corporate environment. Which, of course, is its very purpose.
Right - Obamacare. But the 14th A is implicated because the 14 A is always the feds strongest argument for interfering with 1st A rights. The whole "scrutiny" thing, and what you point out as an almost sure future effort to prove "compelling state interest", is based on a faulty assumption that the feds can interfere with our 1st A rights via the 14th A.
Right. The hijacking of the 14A by the 20th Century Fabian Socialists is underlying reason why this problem will never go away. The feds themselves are now the holders of all the cards now. THEY decide when they can interfere or not. THAT'S tyranny.
So it's only a matter of time unless or until SCOTUS overturns or the states nullify unconstitutional laws and cases like the opinion in Brown that inexplicably and unconstitutionally broke the 75-year precedent of Slaughterhouse.
IMO, the root problem is the legal theory behind the existential status of American corporations. Right now there doesn't seem to be any guiding rule for their purpose, other than to serve the State as income providers. That's why Brown could overturn Slaughterhouse, because it was based on a "new" interpretation of the "needs of the State."
I would argue, however, that corporations are not, in fact, free-floating legal entities entirely at the control of the State in America. Because the very nature of the underlying government of the original Constitution is one of Negative Rights, i.e. derivation from and subservience to the People, and not the other way around. In addition, American corporations are owned by and employee these same Constitutionally-acknowledged People. Thus the claim that a subservient government can somehow "create" a legal entity that is itself free from subservience to the People is, IMHO, oxymoronic. It is an interpretation that can exist in other countries, but not in America - by definition. Because a derivative power can do nothing that is not a result solely of that derived power.
Worse yet, to claim that that derived power can somehow create a derivative power which, in turn, is superior to the People from whom the power is derived, is taking the erroneous logic to its logic conclusion of impossibility. yet that is exactly what has been done - or at least, that is what has been enacted, and studiously avoided being addressed.
In short, the operating system of your computer cannot derived a program with the authority to control you. It might somehow concoct the command system of control that others use as a justification to control you, but the derivation of authority it claims for that control simply cannot lawfully or even logically exist, by definition.
When they successfully claim “compelling state interest” or change the standard of scrutinizing government interference of our 1st Amendment rights, you’ll see, as you do now, the justification of using the 14th Amendment. When they come to arrest you because your church is now considered a “public place” or your land is considered property of the government which will not allow “hate speech”, it will be about the destruction of the Constitution, not about corporate law as convoluted as it may be.
He’ll just have to change the Constitution by executive order.
But if those things come to pass, it will be "Constitutional corporate law" they will cite as the authority to do it. That's why this subject is SO important, because the Founders deliberately made the original Constitution ANTI-collectivist. That's why the workaround for that problem, for the Left, is the imposition of corporate law upon non-corporate people. Everything the Left does, literally ALL of it, is designed, intended or dependent upon corporate law for its enaction. Therefore instead of fighting a million fires, conservatives have to learn about this SINGLE mechanism, and strictly control it's lawful and proper application, and make sure there are safeguards against its wrongful use.
Needless to say, that has not yet been done. In fact, if this subject was a car that needed to be studied so as to completely understand it's workings, Americans are like people sitting on a porch and hearing a roar growing on the road, and then fading away, and asking each other - not even "what was that," but rather, "did you hear something"?
Now the lefty’s know they have four solid SCOTUS votes, they only need one retirement in the next two years.
In the aftermath, the Court vacated several similar cases and sent them back to lower courts to make rulings based on the Hobby Lobby ruling. The court also provided an injunction to Wheaton College to protect it from penalties for refusing to offer contraception.
Given the outrage coming from the Left, you’d think Obamacare was repealed. Far from it. All 2,700 pages remain. Faith trumped the law on just one provision.
The court’s decision has an interesting stipulation. According to Politico Pro, companies can’t just stop contraception coverage. They must go to court to obtain an exemption.
But Daniel Blomberg, an attorney at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who represented Hobby Lobby, says the ruling makes getting the exemption easy. He notes that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act “only applies to the people who assert it.” So employers will be required to register their religious objections with government one by one.
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