When ObamaCare passed religious organizations and companies with run by people of faith complained they would be forced to cover abortion drugs and contraception medicines under the state’s insurance mandate.
Today’s oral arguments are from the companies compelled by ObamaCare to offer insurance coverage of abortion and contraceptive drugs. They include Hobby Lobby company, Conestoga Woods
From SCOTUSBLOG: Issue: Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.
Among the organizations writing amicus briefs is the Becket Fund which depicts the case this way:
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, to be argued at the Supreme Court March 25, 2014, will determine whether the government has the power to force family business owners to act against their faith based solely on their companies’ form of organization. Specifically, the government is mandating that Hobby Lobby provide four potentially life-terminating drugs and devices through their health insurance plans or face severe fines, even as it concedes that doing so will violate the Green family’s beliefs. The Greens and their family businesses have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives under the HHS mandate, and they provide a broad range of contraceptives at no additional cost to employees under their self-insured health plan.
Hobby Lobby’s brief calls on two centuries of high court rulings to counter the government’s reasoning that the Greens’ rights as individuals cannot be exercised through their family-owned corporation. The brief insists that this freedom does not “turn on [the Company’s] tax status,” and further states that the Administration cannot “divide and conquer” the Greens’ religious liberties from those of Hobby Lobby to make those rights “simply vanish.”
In the Citizens United case, the high court determined corporations had the first amendment right to speak out on political issues. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) “provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.”
The intent, of course, is for the companies to be able to act out the religious beliefs of those running the company, in Hobby Lobby’s case the company is closed on Sunday for example.
Stay tuned to the blog to determined how the oral arguments went today.
