<p>If an employer’s religious beliefs state that sex before marriage is a sin, do they have the right to deny obstetric coverage to single female employees who become pregnant? If it’s okay to deny birth control coverage, which is used not only to prevent pregnancy but for many other conditions, why couldn’t this be the next logical step?</p>
<p>And no one addressed the blood transfusion issue. Jehovah’s witnesses do not believe in getting blood transfusions. I’ve known of nurses who refused to hang blood on their patients, even though those patients are NOT Jehovah’s witnesses. If other employees get to direct insurance coverage based on their religious beliefs, why couldn’t they?</p>
<p>Just how far do we allow others’ belief systems to impact the lives of their employees, particularly in the case of a larger company like Hobby Lobby where the average employee might never have known about the religious beliefs of an owner they never met and whose beliefs they never thought to research. I work for a group of doctors. Never occurred to me to google them to try to figure out what their personal religious beliefs are to see if it could impact health insurance policies offered to the employees.</p>
<p>@Hanna, I hope you are right (although I do respect calmom’s legal knowledge too).</p>
<p>Does the law say sincerity matters? Because I think the case quickly falls apart if it does. Again, this is a company that a) used to offer these benefits until the rise of coordinated efforts against the ACA and b) is doing nothing as far as I have heard to extend its values to its sourcing and manufacturing operations in China (which of course would mean no more cheap Chinese goods for Hobby Lobby). So even if we buy that the owners had some spiritual epiphany that just happened to coincide with political influences over the past few years, we haven’t seen any demonstrated effort to SINCERELY change the way they do business.</p>
<p>There are still a few things I don’t understand in this case:</p>
<p>How a business entity can have “beliefs” (even accepting the "corporations are people argument).</p>
<p>How protection of these beliefs override protections against discrimination.</p>
<p>I know this is slightly off-topic from the original vaccine discussion but as I have said earlier I imagine it will all intersect at some point.</p>
<p>@Nrdsb4, I think we are headed for a lot of scenarios like that, and not just with religious beliefs. In my state, Wisconsin, people have been passed over for jobs in the past few years (or removed from them once they were hired) based on whether they signed the petition to recall our governor in 2012. During the protests that started a year before that, all kinds of databases sprung up listing which businesses were “pro-Walker” or “pro-union” (even though the issue went far beyond organized labor). Store and restaurant owners put up signs stating their allegiance (or lack thereof). One fancy restaurant in downtown Madison actually refused to serve the governor. Just imagine how this could all play out.</p>
<p>Normally I don’t buy into “slippery slope” arguments but this one is a glaring red flag for me. Too easy to deny things on a whim.</p>
<p>It has to be all or nothing. If you want to pick and choose what your employees can get coverage for, you should have to pay the fine and not offer anything. </p>
<p>The most important thing to realize about denial of facts is that your side does it too. Whatever side you’re on, your side does it too. “We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers.”</p>
<p>@sally305: “Does the law say sincerity matters?”</p>
<p>Not at the level you are talking about – that is the courts aren’t going to get into inconsistencies within religious beliefs. (Believing A. but not extending that to belief B – for example, whether is consistent to oppose abortion on grounds that it is murder, but support the death penalty.)</p>
<p>I think the more significant issue is simply the fact that Hobby Lobby provided insurance that covered all forms of birth control to its employees before ACA; but post-ACA they are trying to pick and choose among methods to cover. Their argument seems to come down to the fact that that government made an exception for churches --so they should be able to get an exception too. If the court does decide in favor of Hobby Lobby, I think it will be drawn on those very narrow grounds — that is, the court would hold that the government doesn’t have to make any accommodation for religious beliefs, but once it does, it has to extend them to anyone who applies, wiping out the distinction between non-profit and for profit groups. </p>
<p>“How a business entity can have “beliefs””</p>
<p>You might want to read the transcript of the argument that I linked to above, if you haven’t already. There was some discussion of that, but it pretty much came down to the fact that these are closely held “corporations”, not shareholder corporations. So Hobby Lobby has adopted the corporate form to do business, but it is wholly owned by a single family. I think it’s pretty clear that whatever opinion comes out will draw that distinction pretty clearly.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t see how sincerity can be a legal issue.”</p>
<p>For starters, it can be if it is written into a statute.</p>
<p>Lots of cases turn on questions of sincerity. For example, in deciding whether to sanction a party, or award legal fees, a judge may have to decide whether some action was taken in bad faith. You can’t really know for sure what was going on in someone’s mind, but all the same, that’s the way the law works. Similarly, lots of crimes (like attempted murder) require the court to find that the defendant had X or Y intent. There’s no machine that can look into their brains and prove that. You use someone’s words and actions as evidence to make a determination about what their intent was.</p>
<p>The First Amendment isn’t intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you claim an exemption from a law (such as the draft) on the basis of religious faith, courts can and do examine whether your statements are sincere.</p>
<p>Outbreak in Orange County and parts of New York, too. </p>
<p>Honestly, I wish these parents could be charged with child endangerment or something similar. Because really… that’s what it is. You are knowingly and unnecessarily putting your child at risk. No excuse. </p>