Hobby Lobby has a bee in their bonnet about the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The owners of Hobby Lobby, like many of their business peers, have decided that providing birth control, specifically Plan B, or the morning after pill, which they contend causes abortions, to their employees through their insurance is in violation of their religious freedom under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
So, Hobby Lobby filed a lawsuit, claiming religious persecution, but was ruled against by the U.S. District Court in November. They filed an appeal for an injunction and were summarily denied by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, who cited a previous decision in a similar lawsuit:
The central point of the district court’s substantial-burden analysis was succinctly stated:
[T]he particular burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [the corporate] plan, subsidize someone else’s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiff[s’] religion. Such an indirect and attenuated relationship appears unlikely to establish the necessary “substantial burden.”
We agree. As the district court noted, other cases enforcing RFRA have done so to protect a plaintiff’s own participation in (or abstention from) a specific practice required (or condemned) by his religion. We do not think there is a substantial likelihood that this court will extend the reach of RFRA to encompass the independent conduct of third parties with whom the plaintiffs have only a commercial relationship.
The motion for an injunction pending appeal is denied.
But Hobby Lobby didn’t stop there. Instead, they appealed to the Supreme Court, who issued a four-page opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, refusing to hear the case (emphasis added):
Applicants do not satisfy the demanding standard for the extraordinary relief they seek. First, whatever the ultimate merits of the applicants’ claims, their entitlement to relief is not “indisputably clear.” Lux v. Rodrigues, 561
This Court has not previously addressed similar RFRA or free exercise claims brought by closely held for-profit corporations and their controlling shareholders alleging that the mandatory provision of certain employee benefits substantially burdens their exercise of religion. Cf. United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252 (1982) (rejecting free exercise claim brought by individual Amish employer who argued that paying Social Security taxes for his employees interfered with his exercise of religion). Moreover, the applicants correctly recognize that lower courts have diverged on whether to grant temporary injunctive relief to similarly situated plaintiffs raising similar claims, Application for Injunction Pending Appellate Review 25–26, and no court has issued a final decision granting permanent relief with respect to such claims. Second, while the applicants allege they will face irreparable harm if they are forced to choose between complying with the contraception-coverage requirement and paying significant fines, they cannot show that an injunction is necessary or appropriate to aid our jurisdiction. Even without an injunction pending appeal, the applicants may continue their challenge to the regulations in the lower courts. Following a final judgment, they may, if necessary, file a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court.
For the foregoing reasons, the application for an injunction pending appellate review is denied.
So, what’s an anti-woman, anti-birth control organization to do? You flip the court the bird, of course, and put your money where your mouth is:
Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby will defy a federal law that requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for types of contraception that the firm’s owners consider to be “abortion-causing drugs and devices,” an attorney for the company said Thursday.
With Wednesday’s rejection of an emergency stay of that federal health care law by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday.
“They’re not going to comply with the mandate,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the company. “They’re not going to offer coverage for abortion-inducing drugs in the insurance plan.”
As for the potential fines, Duncan said, “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Good for them. They’re going to stand by their principles, suck it up and pay the fines. But in all fairness, I hope they get fined up to their eyeballs. Religious freedom, in their eyes, only applies to them and they believe they should have every right to force their religious beliefs on their employees, no matter what those employees might believe, but that’s not how religious freedom works.
I guess they’ll learn the hard way.
About Beth
So, freedom of religion means that they are the only ones who have freedom? So if I work for a corporation, I am to be ruled by the founders religious beliefs……. hmmmmmm. Do they understand the can of worms they are opening or do they under estimate the irony they are provoking.
Besides hoping the fines are up to their eyeballs, I hope they get the employees they deserve. I won’t be shopping there.
Besides getting fined up to the eyeballs, I hope they end up getting exactly the employees they deserve.
The RFRA should not apply to a company since a company in and of itself cannot practice a religion – it cannot attend a church, synagogue, or mosque, it cannot worship, in short, Corporations. Are. Not. People. I really don’t see that privately owned companies are any different. They choose to close on Sundays, fine, every business sets its operating hours, I don’t care what their reasons are.
But there are consequences to all actions. I know a student who was adamant about being off on Sundays and Wednesday nights for church. EVERY Sunday and every Wednesday night without exception was her demand which she made clear on job applications. Her religion, her prerogative. However, don’t come to me with disappointment that you can’t find a job on nights and weekends that will let you always exclude Sundays and Wednesday nights no matter what.
And Hobby Lobby shouldn’t be allowed to make what are truly health decisions for their employees. So they made a choice, they say they are willing to take their consequences. Cool by me, but write the check – I will be more impressed by their willingness to put their money where their religion is when I see them pay the fine instead of talking about it.
The store chain Schottensteins, based in Ohio, is closed on Saturdays because the owners are Jewish – bravo to them for being willing to lose the busiest business day of the week – but they don’t tell their employees they can’t eat non-kosher food in the break room. (The owners also own or own controlling interest in several other companies including Value City Furniture and Cold Stone Creamery, but their rule is that any business with the family name on it cannot be open on the Sabbath.)
The argument that Hobby Lobby is trying to make, that in paying for employee insurance premium in a policy that allows contraception is that their money might eventually through many channels end up allowing for murder of innocents, which in their minds includes zygotes. So next will they argue that they should pay no taxes because that money might eventually through many channels end up paying for a bullet used in a war? After all, if we’re going for the “Thou shalt not kill” argument, we might as well go all the way.
Hey, I don’t believe in murder… can I get out of paying taxes? Even sales tax might end up allowing the state government to do something I don’t believe in (like, say, putting guns in our schools). That would save me one helluva lot of money!