is a corporation like a church?

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/04/is-a-corporation-like-a-church.html



Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius. In both cases, for-profit corporations have challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer-based health plans cover contraception, including certain methods—such as the morning-after pill—that the companies’ owners find objectionable on religious grounds. In both cases, the first question the Court must answer is whether for-profit corporations can have religious faith. For many people, the notion of a religious company rings false. Things get complicated, however, when you consider that thousands of U.S. corporations are, in fact, religious. They’re called churches.

As nonprofit “religious corporations” under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, churches enjoy a variety of legal benefits. For example, churches may flout certain employment discrimination laws when hiring or firing, on the theory that religious institutions should be able to oversee their own affairs, free from governmental intrusion. Hobby Lobby is arguing that it should be entitled to similar benefits—that, as a company, it shouldn’t be precluded from seeking religious accommodations just because it’s organized as a for-profit corporation. In the words of Hobby Lobby’s Supreme Court brief, legal rights shouldn’t “turn on a corporation’s tax status.”

Hobby Lobby’s lawyers, led by a former Solicitor General, Paul Clement, have worked hard to cast a churchlike aura around the company, even though its business has no religious dimension—the stores sell craft supplies. But, unlike many other companies that might qualify down the line for the kind of religious exemptions that Hobby Lobby is requesting, Hobby Lobby actually does seem to care about love-thy-neighbor ideals. Workers get paid higher than the national minimum wage; stores are closed on Sundays, to encourage employees to spend time with their families; and company-subsidized health care is—minus a few forms of contraception—affordable and robust. This inspired Justice Sonia Sotomayor to quip, during Clement’s portion of the argument last Tuesday, that he certainly “picked great plaintiffs.”

But the question is not whether Hobby Lobby behaves well. The question is whether Hobby Lobby is equivalent to a church for the purpose of opting out of the contraception mandate.