US Supreme Court Rejects Obamas Birth Control Mandate

[Solayoh]

Supreme Court rejects Obama, limits birth control mandate | TheHill

The Supreme Court delivered a blow to President Obama’s signature healthcare law on Monday, ruling that closely held companies cannot be compelled to offer their employees birth control as part of the law if they object to the provisions on religious grounds.

I actually agree with the ruling even though a lot of people on Facebook clearly don't. In the UK we have free Universal Healthcare but your still expected to pay for your own condoms and pills etc, not sure why your boss should have to pay for you to be sexually active.

Even then the exemption is only for strong religious reasons. So I assume normal companies are still bound by it etc?

 

[proserpina]

Actually, here in the UK you can get free condoms from many clinics and the pill is not subject to prescription charges other drugs face. Contraception is free with the NHS.

I'm disappointed by this ruling. What's interesting to note is that according to that article, this ruling protecting the religious limitations of coverage companies offer does not extend to blood transfusions or immunisations, which some people may have religious objection to also.

 

[Solayoh]

Actually, here in the UK you can get free condoms from many clinics and the pill is not subject to prescription charges other drugs face. Contraception is free with the NHS.

I'm disappointed by this ruling. What's interesting to note is that according to that article, this ruling protecting the religious limitations of coverage companies offer does not extend to blood transfusions or immunisations, which some people may have religious objection to also.

Then why are Durex still in business? I remember at school you could get a C-card which got you free condoms but they are only up to a certain age.

 

[proserpina]

Then why are Durex still in business? I remember at school you could get a C-card which got you free condoms but they are only up to a certain age.

Because the sexual health clinics and (some) GP surgeries pay for them with some of the funding the NHS receives through taxes, presumably, and many people still seek to directly buy types clinics or those GP surgeries might not necessarily have at any given time.

This ruling does actually seem to impact quite a lot of companies, disappointingly - or at least according to that article.

The majority repeatedly emphasizes that the ruling affects “closely held” companies, yet does not define them, beyond they are owned and controlled by members of a single family.

The Internal Revenue Service, however, says a business is closely held if five or fewer people hold more than half of the value of its outstanding stock.

A 2009 Columbia University Study concluded that closely held companies account for 52 percent of the American workforce.

So, essentially, 52% of the workforce could theoretically be left paying for contraception if their employers now decide they do not wish to provide coverage for contraception as a result of religious views, and there is the possibility that even non-closely held companies may now try to seek this exemption also. However, as the article also states, it would be pretty surprising if people who already had contraceptive coverage suddenly lost it, at least.

 

[Lysson]

I don't have a political stance, I just fight for what I believe is right.
But doesn't this make it so a small business can push its own religious views onto their own employees? Isn't that unfair on the employee's religion?
This is illogical and regressive as they are enforcing their religious views onto the woman and further stripping her of her rights (to my knowledge women's rights in America are worse then in Britain and some of Europe)

I can't see why the government can't just do it for everyone instead of making a business pay but whatever not my country.

This will also increase discrimination as the reason employers would rather employ a man as they don't have as much leave as a woman when having a child and a business must pay for her leave which puts them off hiring a woman as it's expensive to them. (I also hate how they do this for people with depression too)

I can understand small businesses not wanting to pay for it but it would be cheaper in the long run then having to pay for a woman's leave because you were too selfish to give her enough money as it is.
Also my gender has nothing to do with my beliefs.

 

[Solayoh]

I don't have a political stance, I just fight for what I believe is right.
But doesn't this make it so a small business can push its own religious views onto their own employees? Isn't that unfair on the employee's religion?
This is illogical and regressive as they are enforcing their religious views onto the woman and further stripping her of her rights (to my knowledge women's rights in America are worse then in Britain and some of Europe)

By saying I'm not going to pay for something for you, does not mean I'm imposing my views on you. Your perfectly free to go and buy some yourself. I think this ruling says "I can't stop you, just don;t expect me to pay for it."

I can't see why the government can't just do it for everyone instead of making a business pay but whatever not my country.

This will also increase discrimination as the reason employers would rather employ a man as they don't have as much leave as a woman when having a child and a business must pay for her leave which puts them off hiring a woman as it's expensive to them. (I also hate how they do this for people with depression too)

Um actually it does the reverse, if a small business has to pay for your contraception as well as everything else, they'd probably rather go with a man.

I can understand small businesses not wanting to pay for it but it would be cheaper in the long run then having to pay for a woman's leave because you were too selfish to give her enough money as it is.
Also my gender has nothing to do with my beliefs.

Leave should be available to both parents equally so that employers have the same risk of paying for leave whether they hire a man or a woman.
Sweden is excellent for this!

 

[Lysson]

@Solayoh;
Hmm I do agree with the last part. I can understand employers not wanting to pay for what people do in their pass time but I was only enraged that the reason they don't want to pay is for 'religious views' and making it harder for people to exercise their own, like a Protestant Christian or other. I also thought that it could count for males too but even if you are free to go and buy some yourself you may not have enough money and I was thinking by letting this pass more strong religious views can be imposed on people and could be outside of this.
If it was to do with money instead I wouldn't be as mad and I now understand a little more of your points xD Thank you for explaining your points though!

 

[Osprey]

Solayoh, I have no idea why my country's leader thinks the government needs to be in charge of keeping people from getting pregnant. Too bad this is a solid example of most of our wonderful president's ideals. Handholding throughout your entire life... it makes for a pretty boring and restrictive game.

A business is owned and run with people who can have their own opinions. If they choose to not support a form of abortion, I believe they have the right to do so. And they won't deny employees abortion in all forms, just a certain method of it. Besides, unlike illness or disease, where it's a problem that occurs out of the person's control, people DO have some control over getting pregnant or not! It shouldn't be your employer's problem that you're too careless with your intimate life.

 

[Fig]

What's moronic is the idea that an employer's religion should have an influence in what kind of healthcare he offers to employee. (We are NOT turning this thread in a debate on whether or not it's moronic that health insurance should be left to employers to begin with)

As Justice Ginsberg said in her dissent, what about Jeovah's witness who believe blood transfusion is wrong, should they be spared from having their employee's health insurance cover that? What about scientologists (legally a religion in the US!) who hold that psychiatric treatement is evil, are they allowed to refuse to cover that with their health insurance?

More worrisome is the notion that a legal fiction (a corporation) can hold religious beliefs.

Because, let's get this in the clear here. The Green Family...is actually not relevant. They don't have a contract with the employees of Hobby Lobby. They don't provide these employees with health insurace. Hobby Lobby does these things. Hobby Lobby isn't the green family; it's, legally speaking, a different person. All they are, is shareholders of Hobby Lobby. Doesn't matter how large their share is. They are not Hobby Lobby, and Hobby Lobby is not them.

That's a legal fiction, of course, but a pretty damn important legal fiction. Why? Because, if Hobby Lobby ever goes bankrupt, it,s the legal fiction that keeps Hobby Lobby's creditors from saying "Hey Greens, your company is out of cash so sell your houses to pay its debts". By being a legally distinct person, Hobby Lobby has its own debts, its own assets, and any debt Hobby Lobby has can only be paid by seizing Hobby Lobby's belongings. Not the belongings of the shareholders.

But all the same, Hobby Lobby remains a legal fiction. So then the question is, how would a legal fiction have religious beliefs? It can certainly have interests, which may involve it taking side on some political issues (ie, "Vote for the guy who will lower our taxes", "Vote for the guy who will build a new highway next to our store"). But religious belief isn't a matter of interest - it's as the name say a matter of belief, a matter of faith. A legal fiction simply cannot have these things.

Religious freedom, intrisequely, is the right to freely practice and express your sincerely held religious beliefs - and the obligation for the state not to interfere with the free practice of your beliefs. If you don't have religious beliefs (And I don't mean agnosticism or atheism, which are, if not religious beliefs, at least religious positions, but the complete absence of any kind of religious position or beliefs), then it follows you cannot be prevented from practicing them. In which case, your religious freedom is not violated.

It seems to me that in this whole notion, the supreme court and the Green feel that you should be able to have your cake (be separate from the corporation when it's a matter of keeping your money safe) and eat it too (but be considered the same as the corporation when it comes to imposing your beliefs on the corporation).

That, in my opinion, is rather repugnant. Either Hobby Lobby is a separate legal entity, or it's not. If it is, then the Greens' religious beliefs shouldn't hold any relevance to the contractual relations of Hobby Lobby with its employees. If it's not, then the Greens had better hope they never run into financial trouble.

If you want to have the upsides of separate personhood, you have to accept the downsides.

Also:
Danger sign: The Supreme Court has already expanded Hobby Lobby decision*-*Los Angeles Times

So people claiming "it's just abortion-like stuff": kindly stop.

 

[Solayoh]

I think your clutching at staws a little to say that Hobby Lobby and the Greens are completely seperate, yes you are "technically" correct but in practise you can see that its owned run etc by the Green Family, it is their business, their property, their livelihood etc, and I don't think it's out of reason for your business to reflect your ethics.

Also the Supreme Court ruled iirc that it's only for small family owned companies like this one. Verizon, Wal Mart BP etc, will not be able to claim this exemption.

Coming from the UK, the whole thing is a little hard to fathom, as we have Universal healthcare, where everyone is covered, (even Non Brits unfortunately) and the tax payer pays for it, so I guess indirectly the religious people who oppose this sort of thing are funding abortions, but the whole point is it's indirect, no one actually sees their hard earned money going directly to something they disagree with.

I know the US doesn't have a Universal System like we do, but I just don't understand the concept, like why it's expected of the persons employer to provide healthcare? I don't see the link between the guy you work for, and your doctor. Surely in regards to your boss it should just be that you do work for him, he pays you money in return, then you can spend that money however you want, if you want to buy health insurance that's up to you. Maybe set the minimum wage a bit higher so that people can afford health insurance, but yeah can't see why the employer has to pick out and pay for your specific plan, why not just make him pay you more and then buy what you want with it?

 

[Fig]

I don't know. I'm Canadian, so...

think your clutching at staws a little to say that Hobby Lobby and the Greens are completely seperate, yes you are "technically" correct but in practise you can see that its owned run etc by the Green Family, it is their business, their property, their livelihood etc, and I don't think it's out of reason for your business to reflect your ethics.

Also the Supreme Court ruled iirc that it's only for small family owned companies like this one. Verizon, Wal Mart BP etc, will not be able to claim this exemption.

I'm given to understand that they did, but I don't agree. Small family business still get all the benefits of being separate from their business; the fact that ownership is small and limited shouldn't alter the fact that Hobby Lobby is not, legally speaking, the same person as the Green Family, and thuts its rights, beliefs and interests are separate from their rights, beliefs and interests.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I know the US doesn't have a Universal System like we do, but I just don't understand the concept, like why it's expected of the persons employer to provide healthcare? I don't see the link between the guy you work for, and your doctor. Surely in regards to your boss it should just be that you do work for him, he pays you money in return, then you can spend that money however you want, if you want to buy health insurance that's up to you. Maybe set the minimum wage a bit higher so that people can afford health insurance, but yeah can't see why the employer has to pick out and pay for your specific plan, why not just make him pay you more and then buy what you want with it?

It's just something that has evolved in our business culture over time, and I'm sure it has roots in the industrial era, where employees were being torn to shreds by the gear-works of the machines they operated. Here, it's been common practice for the business owner to care about their employees through threat of legal action, as they, at some point or another, were harder to replace than they are now. You want to keep your employee in tip-top shape by figuring out their medical for them, so that you don't have to go through the decline of a careless employee and the process of interviewing and hiring a replacement.

Upping the minimum wage and having the average American figure out their own healthcare would have disastrous consequences. We are a nation so lazy and so taken care of, a nation so riddled with inefficient middle management, regulation and bureaucracy, that we'd never figure it out on our own. We'd likely spend more money now hiring professionals to figure out it. And if we did try it on our own, we'd have to wade through stacks and stacks of paperwork written in undecipherable legalese, and by the time we'd have made any progress, we've been sapped of our will to care and will just hope that nothing bad happens where we actually need health care.

 

[Fig]

Forget that, the idea would fail because even with increased minimum wage affording any kind of reasonable health insurance would be well outside the means of a lot of people. Nothing to do with coddling, everything to do with the extreme economic inefficiency of American healthcare.

 

[Phoenicks]

(I have never understood why cheap birth control is an employer's responsibility. If someone physically can't practice abstinence, I imagine they have far more dangerous problems that birth control won't solve.)

However: Hobby Lobby already pays for many contraceptives in its plans. Hobby Lobby here objected to early term abortifacients that prevent development of fertilized eggs after conception. Source:

Bloomberg Law - Document - Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., No. 13-354 and 13-356, 2014 BL 180313, 123 FEP Cases 621 (U.S. June 30, 2014), Court Opinion

Congress did not specify what types of preventive care must be covered; it authorized the Health Resources and Services Administration, a component of HHS, to decide. Ibid. Nonexempt employers are generally required to provide coverage for the 20 contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including the 4 that may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus. Religious employers, such as churches, are exempt from this contraceptive mandate.

In these cases, the owners of three closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point. In separate actions, they sued HHS and other federal officials and agencies (collectively HHS) under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause, seeking to enjoin application of the contraceptive mandate insofar as it requires them to provide health coverage for the four objectionable contraceptives.

Held: As applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA. Pp. 16-49.

HHS is the Department of Health and Human Services. RFRA is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (which passed the House unanimously, the Senate by a 97-3 vote, and was subsequently signed by President Clinton in 1993). The RFRA reinstated the Sherbert Test, which states:

Sherbert v. Verner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the individual, the court must determine

whether the person has a claim involving a sincere religious belief, and
whether the government action is a substantial burden on the person’s ability to act on that belief.
If these two elements are established, then the government must prove

that it is acting in furtherance of a "compelling state interest," and
that it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion.

Wikipedia adds:

"In the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Congress states in its findings that a religiously neutral law can burden a religion just as much as one that was intended to interfere with religion; therefore the Act states that the “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” "

I know that not all congressmen read the bills they vote on, but something much has changed in the minds of men or the nature of the universe that what 21 years ago was near-unanimous is today controversial. The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act was more popular in Congress than Breaking Bad.

In Short: No, right-wing whacknut wingjobs didn't prove that paying for condoms is so onerous that the government can't force employers to pay for life-saving medical care.

 

[Dorothy LaRouge]

(I have never understood why cheap birth control is an employer's responsibility. If someone physically can't practice abstinence, I imagine they have far more dangerous problems that birth control won't solve.)

The pill has many health benefits besides contraception. It isn't a matter of "not being able to practice abstinence."

 

[Phoenicks]

(I have never understood why cheap birth control is an employer's responsibility. If someone physically can't practice abstinence, I imagine they have far more dangerous problems that birth control won't solve.)

The pill has many health benefits besides contraception. It isn't a matter of "not being able to practice abstinence."

"finding that women who regularly use contraception tend to have more years of education under their belt and greater economic stability—and they also form romantic partnerships that are more solid when compared to women who aren't contraception-covered. "

(From your third source, which implies that women who take the pill don't represent the general population. Possible sampling bias?)

Mind, this doesn't help me understand one iota. There are many health products with many health benefits that aren't considered an employer's responsibility. The pill is only a subset of the kinds of contraception employers are required to cover. I observe that there are many women living healthy lives without it. Probiotics have wonderful health benefits, but they aren't covered on my insurance.

(And my comment on abstinence is only that, if birth control is the only way a woman can avoid pregnancies, this implies something unfortunate about her, i.e., that she's having non-consensual sex. I assume that, if this is the case, that hypothetical is outside this topic's scope.)

 

[Fig]

Lots of atrocious laws were highly popular in congress when passed, Nick.DOMA cleared the house at 342-67 and senate at 85-14 not long after. dADT was adopted as a directive to counter a house vote to make the gays ban in the military federal law


Popularity in congress is no sign of reason.

 

[Big Lutz]

Lots of atrocious laws were highly popular in congress when passed, Nick.DOMA cleared the house at 342-67 and senate at 85-14 not long after. dADT was adopted as a directive to counter a house vote to make the gays ban in the military federal law


Popularity in congress is no sign of reason.

The problem is that the RFRA isn't exactly a horrible law, it sets out to add protection to the First Amendment so that the Government cannot forceably violate a person's religion. If you are mad at anything it should be the 1871 Dictionary Act which states "The words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals."

 

[Phoenicks]

Popularity in congress is no sign of reason.

And I agree. And the Sherbert test strikes me as very reasonable and uncontroversial (no matter that Congress doesn't have the authority to legislate the Supreme Court's rulings). 21 years ago, that's how it struck a large number of legislators.

Now I see legislators moving to strike the RFRA, i.e., exorcise the Sherbert Test, apropos only of this ruling. I'm all for hearing why the Sherbert Test is onerous or a bad rule. But from the party politicians, I hear that the RFRA is bad because it means the government can't force religious groups to pay for abortifacients. (Or however a party politician might phrase the same.)

 

[Fig]

Fair enough, and I agree that as phrased the law isn't exactly some kind of abomination (if anything, it's a general principle that should be expanded to all forms of discrimination and rights violation, and that should be treated as implying the opposite, eg legitimizing affirmative action*). Just popularity in congress is a useless measuring stick

Also, I do have an issue with applying that notion only to religion, and consider THAT part of it a bad law.

(And if we're specific my problem isn't with the notion of corporations as persons - that is a legal necessity - but with the notion that corporate persons can have sincerely held beliefs)