Five takeaways from the Hobby Lobby case

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/06/30/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-contraception/

Lauren Markoe and Cathy Lynn Grossman | Jun 30, 2014
Five things to know about the most-anticipated Supreme Court decision of the year.

1. Corporations can’t pray, but they do have religious rights

Hobby Lobby isn’t a person. It’s a company owned by a religious family. And though the evangelical Green family objects to parts of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, it’s not the Greens but their company that writes the check for employees’ health insurance. The first question the justices had to answer was this: Does Hobby Lobby have religious rights? To many Americans, this sounds a little nutty. Does Burger King believe in God? Can Home Depot go to Mass?

A majority of the justices held that a closely held company such as Hobby Lobby does have religious rights. The court didn’t apply those rights, however, to publicly held corporations, where owners’ religious beliefs would be hard to discern.

But well before the justices had delivered their verdict on this question, many legal scholars said they wouldn’t be surprised were they to affirm the company’s religious rights. American corporations do have some of the rights and responsibilities we usually associate with people. And in the 2010 Citizens United campaign finance case, the justices overturned bans on corporate political spending as a violation of freedom of speech – corporation’s free speech.

2. The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only way to get contraception to women

The justices in this case interpreted not only on the 225-year-old Constitution but also the 21-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). One of the things RFRA says is that if a federal law is going to substantially burden someone’s religious freedom, the feds must make sure that the law uses the “least restrictive means” to achieve its purpose. In this case, the purpose is providing FDA-approved birth control to female employees at no cost.

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