Limiting Rights: Imposing Religion on Workers (NYT editorial)

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/the-supreme-court-imposing-religion-on-workers.html?_r=0

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
JUNE 30, 2014

The Supreme Court’s deeply dismaying decision on Monday in the Hobby Lobby case swept aside accepted principles of corporate law and religious liberty to grant owners of closely held, for-profit companies an unprecedented right to impose their religious views on employees.

It was the first time the court has allowed commercial business owners to deny employees a federal benefit to which they are entitled by law based on the owners’ religious beliefs, and it was a radical departure from the court’s history of resisting claims for religious exemptions from neutral laws of general applicability when the exemptions would hurt other people.

The full implications of the decision, which ruled in favor of employers who do not want to include contraceptive care in their company health plans, as required by the Affordable Care Act, will not be known for some time. But the immediate effect, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in a powerful dissent, was to deny many thousands of women contraceptive coverage vital to their well-being and reproductive freedom. It also invites, she said, other “for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faiths.”

The case involved challenges by two companies, Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet maker, to the perfectly reasonable requirement that employer health plans cover (without a co-payment) all birth control methods and services approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The main battleground was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which says government may not “substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion” unless the burden is necessary to further a “compelling government interest” and achieves it by “the least restrictive means.”

more at link

[merrily]

1. Bush: worst POTUS ever. Roberts Court: Worst

SCOTUS ever. See any pattern there?

Meanwhile, Republicans would faux filibuster healing cancer under a Democratic President, but Democrats didn't filibuster even the barely-qualified Thomas (per the American Bar Association) and eleven Democrats joined Republicans in confirming the ill-qualified sexual harasser, for a 52 to 48 vote in a Senate with a Democratic majority. (Even two Republicans voted against confirmation, but eleven Democrats voted yes, conveniently just enough to confirm with a bit of a margin in case someone changed his vote at the last minute. Also conveniently, Vice President Potatoe Head presided, just in case his voted was needed to break a tie.)

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by then Senator Biden made no recommendation at all, for or against, despite the ABA rating and Hill's testimony--and Hill's passing a lie detector test to which the media had challenged her.

Please don't tell me it's because Democrats are too nice or too cowardly. When they really want something, they manage to get it done. The rest is kabuki theater, presented for your enjoyment (and their protection for re-election) in the D.C. Zone.

[libodem]

2. A huge pile of male hypocrisy

http://ringoffireradio.com/2014/07/hobby-lobby-is-a-huge-pile-of-male-hypocrisy/