Your gut is not wrong, the surface issue of this decision is a big deal because it directly impacts body autonomy. It’s a big deal because five men voted to allow a company to disallow insurance coverage of certain types of medication that is made for those who have a uterus. Let’s take a step back and look at the whole picture.
This is not about reproductive rights.
It would be fiscally unsound for Hobby Lobby to not cover contraception. Women are being used as human shields to allow business owners to impose their beliefs on their employees. Thrown under the bus for the good of the people. People as in the Green Family’s massive craft s store chain. The main argument brought by the lawyers of Hobby Lobby is that The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFCA) applied to the company, not just actual human beings. Yes, it’s Citizens United again. It’s worse because it entangles church and state with corporate personhood. Mother Jones reports:
This 5-4 ruling applies to about 90 percent of all American businesses, and 52 percent of America’s workforce.
Those four medications were chosen with intent to incite a riot. They are succeeding by distracting “the dumb liberals” and sending Democrats off track with a “don’t you know that these forms of birth control prevent implantation, not induce abortions?!” rally while they open a portal for religion to interfere with law.
This is exactly what the founding documents were created to prevent. Freedom of Religion is also the freedom from religion. Now any company that fits Antonin Scalia’s definition of a family-owned business can replicate this and more.
Yesterday’s 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby hits hard. This is what the Tea party has fought tooth and nail for since 2009. That’s all they’ve cared about. A handful of Scrooge McDucks stirred the pot of the conservative fringe and used them to get control of our government. This is what the Koch brothers have been dreaming of for decades. Acknowledging corporations as single entities with inalienable rights is worse than all the birth control in the country being thrown into the Boston Harbor. The justices who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby are in bold. The appointing president is listed second. All men, all conservatives.
- John Roberts – GWB
- Antonin Scalia – Reagan
- Anthony Kennedy – Reagan
- Clarence Thomas – GWB
- Samuel Alito – GWB
- Ruth Bader Ginsberg – Clinton
- Stephen Breyer – Clinton
- Sonia Sotomayor – Obama
- Elena Kagan – Obama
Despite how much this insults our feminist opinions, I repeat, this is not about reproductive rights. I don’t think it’s even about religious freedom. It’s about cementing McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. The reward for the religious right is that it establishes more precedence to the damage created by Town of Greece v. Galloway. They have to have their treats or they will wander over to the next house for attention. I can’t tell if they don’t care that they are being used because its a means to their end or if they are clueless.
Democrats have to start swinging. Decorum be damned.
The slippery slope is here and we are sliding down fast. Justice Ginsburg set a fabulous example in her dissent. She uses Scalia’s arguments from other cases against him and beautifully tears apart the terminology used by Hobby Lobby. Some say she is going so far as trolling him. I say it’s all fair game because he said it.
The Court does not even begin to explain how one might go about ascertaining the religious scruples of a corporation where shares are sold to the public. No need to speculate on that, the Court says, for “it seems unlikely” that large corporations “will often assert RFRA claims.” Perhaps so, but as Hobby Lobby’s case demonstrates, such claims are indeed pursued by large corporations, employing thousands of persons of different faiths, whose ownership is not diffuse. “Closely held” is not synonymous with “small.” Hobby Lobby is hardly the only enterprise of sizable scale that is family owned or closely held. For example, the family-owned candy giant Mars, Inc., takes in $33 billion in revenues and has some 72,000 employees, and closely held Cargill, Inc., takes in more than $136 billion in revenues and employs some 140,000 persons.
– “Ginsburg, J., dissenting,” footnote 19, page 78
Get out and support your local candidates. I’m out of metaphors and patience.
