Hobby Lobby Won the Contraception Case, but the Christian Right Lost a Major PR Battle

By Amanda Marcotte

Monday's Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby is, at best, a muted victory for the anti-choice movement.* The decision exempts “closely held” corporations from offering insurance coverage of contraceptives. The court argues this won’t create a major burden for female employees, since alternative solutions can be found. Indeed, as the court noted, Health and Human Services already has a workable fix in place to help employees of religiously affiliated companies secure contraception coverage. This solution simultaneously exempts the employer from offering plans that cover contraceptives, while requiring the insurance company to sidestep the employer and offer coverage directly to the employee—who, after all, bought and paid for her own insurance by working. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito suggests that employees of “closely held” corporations could benefit from a similar deal:



There might be a short-lived victory on the right over this—until it sinks in that insured women will continue to have their contraceptives covered by the insurance they’ve paid for, regardless of their bosses’ opinions on the matter.

That’s why I see this entire thing as something of an embarrassment for the religious right. Ever since the lawsuits began over the HHS contraception coverage mandate, the claim has been that the attacks are not about sex but about religion—which presumably has broader implications than simply resenting women's sexual liberation. But this decision limits the employer's religious reach exclusively to judgments about the employee's personal use of her own vagina, and no further. "This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito writes.

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