SCOTUS decides for Hobby Lobby

[OttoVonBismarck]

Sure.

Corporations have always had some level of rights.

The law at issue in Citizens United permitted the individual members of Citizens United to use their own funds to finance the challenged communications. Nor was there a finding that the use of the corporate form was essential in order for the individuals to deliver that message.  The case was decided on the Court's conclusion that Citizens United, the corporation was entitled to protection for its own speech as an entity.

And I guess it's impossible to view speech as a different right than religious belief? I'd argue it's nonsensical for a very large corporation with thousands or hundreds of thousands of shareholders to have a genuine religious belief. But I think that since public issue affect these corporations it only makes sense they should be able, collectively, to take a stand on those issues. In fact they have always been able to do so, through advertisement, political action committees and etc. It's only in the narrow case of Federal Elections Law that they were restricted in the way they could exercise their corporate speech in terms of what types of advertisements they could run during certain windows around Federal Elections.

On the other hand, a very closely held corporation (using the IRS term) is essentially just a small cabal of owners probably belonging to one family, and I think you can make a pretty logical argument that such a group have a genuine shared religious belief that could be infringed upon by government action.

Of course this case wasn't about the constitution and innate rights at all. But about the RFRA, which if it did not exist, this suit would not either. The RFRA could have been bypassed in the wording of the PPACA (by explicitly saying the RFRA does not apply), and the SCOTUS certainly would have had no grounds to rule like this on an RFRA claim when the Congress itself had made explicit how to resolve the issue. But with the existence of the RFRA and no clear Congressional intent on how to square the RFRA with PPACA that puts it firmly in the court's bailiwick for deciding how it sorts out.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You are using logic on a ruling from the Roberts court, the most activist court of the last 40 years.  That's why you are failing to grasp the issue.  This ruling is about the personal beliefs of the Supremes, not about the law.  Just as Citizens United was.  There is no requirement that personal beliefs be consistent or logical.

I certainly agree that most SCOTUS decisions and most justices simply rule on personal preference now. I don't know how I'd measure "most" activist so I can't agree with that. But to me this just shows the fallacy of judicial review, it's something that should not exist and in many countries does not. Judicial review is a pox on mankind.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't think that health care is best provided through employers in the first place. Ideally there would either be a basic public provision for universal health care or less ideally mandatory insurance with free / heavily subsidized insurance for the poor.

Actually this is wrong. I think universal public health care is not the ideal. I'd rather have the German system than the NHS. In the German system non-profit organizations offer basic health insurance to anyone who needs it essentially, you have to pay into this and have said insurance in most situations. If you have a "normal" job, you and your employer will both pay into it. But unlike our current healthcare system, the employers don't actually administer the plan or anything, they're just paying money to the non-profit organization that runs it. I believe each State has its own non-profit org that provides this base level of health insurance. The unemployed and low income receive forms of assistance and I believe may receive refunds of the employee share of the insurance cost.

The best thing about the German system to me, is these non-profits each essentially have the market cornered in each State, and have rigorous controls of health care costs that they can perform. And since the government is almost always the worst choice to run anything, they (in my opinion) do a much better job than the NHS because they aren't trying to run health care, they just run the payment system and work to control costs. There is private insurance too, which I think would be a bone to some of the far righties here if we had such a system. Some 15% of Germans have opted out of the system I just described and use private insurance (which typically is much cheaper if you're a young healthy person, but can get more expensive than the comparable option in the public system as you get older or get sicker)--I think one hitch in the German system that I recall is that if you opt out, it's not just like flipping a switch to get back in. So if you make the jump to the private insurance system you better be really sure that's what you want long term.

We don't live in that world, even if Obamacare moved us toward it. The model that Obamacare uses forces certain employers (but not all) to provide health insurance, subject to sanctions, in order to keep people out of the private sector which will be heavily subsidized by the government.

To the extent that is our model, I'm not outraged by the scope of the employers forced to provide health insurance being reduced by those that are closely held corporations that also can demonstrate a moral aversion to providing medical care. Those numbers will be so much smaller than the number of people employed by small business, why get bent out of shape over that?

Also, I really don't know how things are working so far, but theoretically such luminary employees as Wal Mart, Target, and many grocery stores are offering health insurance now. So if you really want health insurance, and somehow can't get a private plan, there should be places you can get insurance with your employment.

In general the exchanges were supposed to cover anyone who falls through the various cracks, but there are still certain classes of people that get screwed. I think for example if your employer's health insurance is compliant with Obamacare, but in such a way that it still really sucks for some things or sucks over all (this is possible because of how PPACA was written there are ways to game the system) you are ineligible for exchange subsidies. I believe anyone can join an exchange, but if your employer offers a shitty but compliant plan, then you can't get subsidized exchange plans and some of the exchange plans are really expensive without the low income subsidies. If you're higher income you may be able to just get regular private insurance anyway if you have a shitty employer in terms of the benefit package.

I think the Hobby Lobby employees who want contraceptive coverage may fall into this category, or at least they're now in the same category as employees of religious organizations. I can't remember if those types of employees are eligible for exchange plan subsidies or not. I think their plans are considered non-compliant  but the employers are simply exempted from the fines, so the employees may be eligible for the same subsidies as employees of any other non-compliant company.

To me one of the weird things about PPACA is, if HL had just dropped health insurance entirely the fine was something like $27m/year. Which wouldn't have been enough to seriously impact Hobby Lobby's business--in fact since they'd no longer be offering health insurance it's most likely it would have increased their margin. But offering non-compliant healthcare the fine was like an order of magnitude higher, and since they'd still be offering health insurance they'd be keeping all of those costs. It would have been enough that the Green family would probably have sold HL off since it'd have been bankrupted. So the PPACA actually incentivizes just not offering health insurance to some degree since the penalties for such are benign compared to the cost of actually offering the insurance.

[Zanza]

Actually this is wrong. I think universal public health care is not the ideal. I'd rather have the German system than the NHS. In the German system non-profit organizations offer basic health insurance to anyone who needs it essentially, you have to pay into this and have said insurance in most situations. If you have a "normal" job, you and your employer will both pay into it. But unlike our current healthcare system, the employers don't actually administer the plan or anything, they're just paying money to the non-profit organization that runs it. I believe each State has its own non-profit org that provides this base level of health insurance. The unemployed and low income receive forms of assistance and I believe may receive refunds of the employee share of the insurance cost.

The best thing about the German system to me, is these non-profits each essentially have the market cornered in each State, and have rigorous controls of health care costs that they can perform. And since the government is almost always the worst choice to run anything, they (in my opinion) do a much better job than the NHS because they aren't trying to run health care, they just run the payment system and work to control costs. There is private insurance too, which I think would be a bone to some of the far righties here if we had such a system. Some 15% of Germans have opted out of the system I just described and use private insurance (which typically is much cheaper if you're a young healthy person, but can get more expensive than the comparable option in the public system as you get older or get sicker)--I think one hitch in the German system that I recall is that if you opt out, it's not just like flipping a switch to get back in. So if you make the jump to the private insurance system you better be really sure that's what you want long term.

In general this description is correct, but the health insurers don't generally have a regional focus. As far as I know most operate in the entire country. Most are loosely based on former sectors of industry, but membership is no longer limited to those working in certain industries.
The rates and even the scope of services is negotiated between a representative body of the health insurers, and those of doctors and hospitals. Germany organizes a lot of things like that with big federal entities that are controlled by the actual stakeholders, not the state, but get a certain legal status through statuary law to guarantee their ability to negotiate efficiently. That removes the direct political influence, but still makes sure that several parties have similar negotiating powers. These entities will typically not be allowed to be active outside their limited scope, i.e. they may not comment on general political questions.

[crazy canuck]

Alito says the court has "little trouble" concluding that the HHS contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of region: "The Hahns and the Greens believe that providing the coverage demanded by the HHS regulation is connected to the destruction of an embryo in a way that is sufficient to make it immoral for them to provide the coverage."

Did The US Supreme Court pierce the corporate veil to find that a corporation has the religious beliefs of its shareholders?  If so, what happend to the Rule of Law?  And what now happens to the concept of limited liabilty?

[The Minsky Moment]

Did The US Supreme Court pierce the corporate veil to find that a corporation has the religious beliefs of its shareholders? 

The majority opinion proceeds as if blissfully unaware of the entirety of state law corporate alter ego doctrine.  This is why it is having their cake and eating it too.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Much as you're going on blissfully unaware of the RFRA apparently.

[The Minsky Moment]

Much as you're going on blissfully unaware of the RFRA apparently.

How do you get that?
The claimant here is a corporation.  RFRA address burdens on "a person's exercise of religion." So unless the corporation and its owners are alter egos or unless acting in a corporate form is critical to owner's exercise of faith, the religious beliefs of the owners should not be relevant.

All RFRA really does is specify the standards applicable to constitutional free exercise claims.  It doesn't address standing to make those claims, actually it specifically says general rules of standing are applicable.   

[The Minsky Moment]

A little more background here:
These were actually two consolidated cases.  In each case, the individuals owners sued personally as well as the corporations.  In each case, the individual claims were denied.  And in each case, the individual claims were NOT appealed to the Supreme Court.  The only questions addressed to the Supreme Court were: (1) whether the corporations had prosecutable free exercise rights under RFRA and (2) whether the free exercise rights of the corporations were violated by the contraceptive mandate. 

[DontSayBanana]

A little more background here:
These were actually two consolidated cases.  In each case, the individuals owners sued personally as well as the corporations.  In each case, the individual claims were denied.  And in each case, the individual claims were NOT appealed to the Supreme Court.  The only questions addressed to the Supreme Court were: (1) whether the corporations had prosecutable free exercise rights under RFRA and (2) whether the free exercise rights of the corporations were violated by the contraceptive mandate. 

And, as usual, the court drops the ball on the question it should have asked all along, which isn't necessarily whether corporations have free exercise rights, but which takes precedence when their free exercise collides with both an employee's free exercise and their medical right to privacy.

[Siege]

I'm getting tired of reading liberal bullshit in this place.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Little aside here--who had heard of Hobby Lobby prior to this case? Apparently there is one less than 5 miles from my house, in a major shopping center I frequent all the time. When I first read about this case maybe 6 months ago, I remember thinking Hobby Lobby must be some plains state store we don't have here as I had never heard of it in my life (and I read the owners are from Oklahoma or something), imagine my surprise when I was going to Target and noticed an HL in the same shopping center.

Now, I'm not totally ignorant of the existence of crafts stores, I've noticed Michaels stores for years, but HL kind of snuck up on me. I'd never so much as heard of it until six months ago and apparently they've had a store here for years.

[Ed Anger]

I got a stone frog there for the yard. He guards one of the sheds.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, they're a bit new to the area here as well;  I checked them out when they first showed up to see if they covered, you know, other hobbies like model rocketry and whatnot.  Imagine my surprise there were no Warhammer minis to be found. 

Just another Michael's, which is already seriously entrenched in the mid-Atlantic.

[CountDeMoney]

I bet Ed burns through a Jo Ann Fabrics like a motherfucker.