Hobby Lobby Ruling Creates Huge Incentives for Corporations to Find Religion

[babylonsister]

http://wonkwire.rollcall.com/2014/07/01/hobby-lobby-ruling-creates-huge-incentive-corporations-find-religion/

Hobby Lobby Ruling Creates Huge Incentives for Corporations to Find Religion

Posted at 12:11 p.m. today

Dahlia Lithwick: “Alito asserts in the majority opinion that the decision ‘concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates … must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs.’”

“If he is right, there are two equally bad possibilities going forward. Either the same court that promises, yet again today, that it will not probe the depth of a religious employer’s conviction, is implying that Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, yes, the Wiccans, are not followers of real religions, and thus their religious objections will be more readily swept aside when they come before the courts. Or—and this is perhaps even more troubling—that while they concede that the government has a meaningful interest in assuring that Americans receive reproductive care, it’s actually only kind of serious, and not nearly as serious as the interest in preventing, say, the spread of disease (in the case of denied vaccinations).”

Here is Justice Alito: “HHS asserts that the contraceptive mandate serves a variety of important interests, but many of these are couched in very broad terms, such as promoting ‘public health’ and ‘gender equality.’ ”

“Silly, silly gender equality. In silly quotation marks! You know what isn’t in quotation marks in this opinion? Infectious diseases. Because there’s a real government interest.”

“More worrisome still, doesn’t this create huge incentives for every for-profit corporation to find religion, and fast?”