Hobby Lobby revisited

For today’s post, I want to look at an article that belies one of the points that was made when I took a closer look at the Hobby Lobby decision a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the link that post:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/some-thoughts-on-hobby-lobby-decision.html

I generally had two thoughts that would summarize the point I was trying to make as what the Hobby Lobby decision might mean going forward.

First, that the decision will potentially be rendered moot if the government becomes more involved in health care and covers the birth control methods that were in question.

The second, which I quote from my post, is as follows:

All this brings me to the final point, which is the idea of religious freedom. For people that are cheering for this decision, that is what they most cite. The first thing to notice is that this decision gives “closely-held” corporations (corporations where 5 or fewer people own 50% or more of shares) now count as people when considering religious freedom. While this was a narrow decision in the present, it could lead to further issues down the line. What if corporations use religious beliefs to discriminate against classes of people? What about other health care procedures that are not allowed by religious faiths (ie blood transfusions with Christian Scientists or vaccinations)? What might happen when the Supreme Court has a much more liberal bent and uses this decision as a method of destroying protections currently seen by religious institutions? I fear the main ramifications of this decision will be seen down the line. To avoid making these decisions is to imply that concerns about birth control are “legitimate” religious concerns, while the other concerns such as opposition to vaccinations, blood transfusions, certain types of medicine, etc. are not “legitimate” religious concerns, and that is a dangerous position for the Supreme Court to go.

My thought is that different groups would start to take advantage of this ruling, and it would not be hard to imagine various court across the country with different political sensibilities to make rulings with results that would not be seen quite as favorably by people who were cheering for the initial Hobby Lobby decision.

This brings me to an article I saw today from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/satanists-troll-the-hobby-lobby-decision/375268/

This article concerns a court case brought The Satanic Temple, a group of Satanists. The details of the actual lawsuit are quite fantastical, which is probably why it ended up in The Atlantic. Basically, this group brought suit that it is seeking an exemption from “informed consent” laws which require doctors to provide certain information to women that are seeking abortions. The group claims that the information is are scientifically unfounded and medically invalid and therefore it would be an affront to their religious beliefs to be exposed to them.

Now, reading the article, it seems clear that there probably is little legal standing for The Satanic Temple on this issue, mostly because the legal claims don’t stand up and it is unclear how these beliefs regarding not hearing the information interfere with the practice of their religion. There is more depth in the article, and I encourage you to read if you are interested in that.

The point I want to make is that while this specific lawsuit is fantastical, it is not hard to see the potential problems that may soon arise with the Hobby Lobby ruling. At the crux of it is how does the court differentiate between religious beliefs and political beliefs. While I do not question the sincerity of Hobby Lobby and their beliefs on contraception, perhaps it is also possible they just don’t want to pay for that specific medicine. What is going to stop other organizations from making the same decisions on a whole variety of similar claims?

Religious liberty is a great thing in individual consciences, but holding that corporations have religious liberty opens up all sorts of opportunity for abuse and corruption.

As I speculated in my previous post, I don’t expect much expansion from the current Supreme Court, but it will not always have the same makeup. And organizations that are not quite as extreme as The Satanic Temple will look to exploit that.

Here is a quote from the article that sums it up:

But as much as anything, the Satanic Temple is trying to make a point: The Supreme Court has accepted the earnestness of one group's politically controversial religious views, leaving an open question about what qualifies as a sincerely held religious belief. The ruling in Hobby Lobby was made "in the context of a familiar religious tradition, rather than one outside of the mainstream," Peñalver said. "We’re a religiously diverse country."

As I said in my previous post, those that were cheering for Hobby Lobby might see the tables be turned on them, leading to decisions they will not like. It might happen even quicker than I thought.