Today, the Supreme Court will consider oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, two cases which challenge Obamacare’s controversial contraception mandate on religious grounds.
Under Obamacare, large employers are required to offer contraception or pay a fine, which the owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga assert would violate their religious tenets. The Justices have been asked to decide whether the mandate violates federal law and the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion.
Here are three things everyone should know about the case:
1) Nobody is Talking About Banning Birth Control
No, Republicans and Hobby Lobby aren’t coming for your birth control. There’s no “war on birth control” or “war on women.” The case is set to resolve the question of whether religious employers may be forced to facilitate an abortion.
For starters, it’s worth mentioning that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga don’t actually have a religious objection to most forms of birth control. The companies are suing only for a religious exemption for abortifacients, a type of contraception that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus (like Plan B). Standard birth control pills, which prevent fertilization of an egg, will be offered by the companies regardless of the case’s outcome.
That detail aside, what would an Obama administration Supreme Court loss on the contraception mandate mean in practical terms?
If the Court grants the religious exception, drug stores will still carry contraception, employees at Hobby Lobby and Conestoga will still be permitted to use contraception, and no federal law will deny women contraception. Religious owners of business, because of their sincere beliefs, simply won’t be required to provide it. Liberals tend to forget contraception was widely available well before Obamacare’s mandates became law in 2009.
2) The Obama Administration Has Already Granted a Narrow Religious Exemption
Some solid evidence that a religious exemption to the contraception mandate won’t be the end of the world or otherwise send women back to the stone ages (i.e. pre-2009): the Obama administration has already granted one.
In the face of dozens of lawsuits over the contraception mandate, last year the Department of Health and Human Services tried to quell some of the outrage by exempting religious organizations and non-profits.
To win the cases, the Obama administration has to convince the Justices that there is a no less restrictive way to accomplish its “compelling governmental interest” of mandating that employers cover contraception. Apparently that interest isn’t so compelling as to prevent the government from already granting certain religious exceptions.
3) Yes, For-Profit Corporations Can Have Rights
Many liberal-leaning commentators have framed the cases as a fight over “corporate rights” rather than a fight for religious freedom, implying that the decision would somehow be a windfall for big, evil corporations.
The contraception mandate’s challengers argue that both the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits the government from burdening a person’s exercise of religion, and the First Amendment require a religious exception.
Believe it or not, treating corporations as persons under the law isn’t controversial. In fact, the very first section of the U.S. Code explicitly states that the word “person” includes “corporations” unless the context of a law indicates otherwise. The fight over the RFRA isn’t a brawl over corporate rights; it’s really just a debate over statutory interpretation.
With regard to the First Amendment, it’s important to remember that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga are not like Exxon-Mobil or Google. Both corporate employers are owned exclusively by members of their religious families and no one else.
So why is it that many liberals believe that someone who starts a business, hires employees and earns a profit suddenly loses their Constitutional rights the moment they decide to incorporate? Nobody believes that the government can search corporate offices without a warrant, or ban guns on corporate private property.
The fact is corporations, made up of people, are perfectly capable of exercising religion. That’s why so many churches take the corporate form, and why the Obama administration already exempted non-profit religious corporations from the contraceptives mandate.
The Supreme Court could decide the case in any number of ways, but Americans can rest assured the consequences of a conservative victory won’t be nearly at dire as newspapers and pundits have absurdly predicted. People don’t need to worry about big corporations or Republicans taking away their birth control. Whether they should worry about government or bureaucrats taking away religious freedoms is another story, however.
