Religion
Related: About this forumCan Religious Groups Ignore All Laws They Don’t Like?
Or just those related to womens health?
By Zoë Carpenter
YESTERDAY 3:01 PM
What I dont understand, Mr. Clemens, said Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday, as she addressed the lawyer for a group of nonprofits whove objected on religious grounds to providing insurance coverage for contraception, is, when will any government law that someone claims burdens their [religious] practice ever be insubstantial?
Thats the big question raised by Zubik v. Burwell, the fourth challenge to the Affordable Care Act to reach the Supreme Court. At issue is a regulation requiring all employer-provided health plans to cover birth control. Some religiously affiliated nonprofitsschools and hospitals, for instance, and a group of nuns called Little Sisters of the Poor, which runs nursing homesobjected to the mandate, so the Obama administration offered them an accommodation: they could opt out of providing contraception coverage by filing a form stating their religious opposition, and the government would work with insurers to provide it.
The plaintiffs in Zubik v. Burwell argue that even filing a form makes them complicit in the process of providing birth control and, accordingly, violates their rights under a federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Paul Clement, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, argued during Wednesdays hearing that the opt-out process was akin to setting up a clinic that offered birth control in a nuns home. It amounts to a hijacking of their health plans, he argued, a phrase later parroted by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is likely to be the swing vote in the ruling.
The objection to the accommodation, specifically, is part of what differentiates Zubik from 2014s Hobby Lobby case, which involved for-profit corporations whose owners also objected to the mandate on religious grounds. In Hobby Lobby the Court ruled that that the companies didnt have to pay for birth control coverage. But it left open the possibility that the government could provide an accommodation similar to what it offered the nonprofits. Now that option is in question. If the religious nonprofits win their case, it means Hobby Lobby, a craft-store chain, and other corporations who object to it would likely be able to fully deny contraception coverage, too, which could impact many more thousands of women.
http://www.thenation.com/article/can-religious-groups-ignore-laws-they-dont-like/
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)We should be able to ignore the laws that we consider associated no matter how distant to our religious freedom?
Does this mean I can start to eat them? I mean, Celtic heritage, Pagan, come ON, I should be able to eat em, right?
rug
(82,333 posts)JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)and if I just FIND one that's edible, not too spoiled, do I have to wait?
rug
(82,333 posts)Use it to contemplate on the feast.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)...would open the gates to a flood of absurd legal claims like this. I'm pretty sure that Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia knew it too. If they were too dense to know it already, Ginsburg told them. They just wanted to toss a goody to their tribe.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,307 posts)"It amounts to a hijacking of their health plans, he argued, a phrase later parroted by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy"
The health plans belong to each employee, surely? Their life, their health. An employer has a duty, thanks to the American system, of care, which means contributing to funding (which is in their own interest anyway). But the health plan has to keep the employee alive and health 24 hours a day, not just at work. The idea that an employee can 'hijack' their own health plan by getting an insurer and the government to arrange contraceptive coverage seems to show they regard employers as having a lien on employees' bodies.
rug
(82,333 posts)It comes from the same place that favors corporations over unions, corporations over humans, corporations over communities. Hobby Lobby and Citizens United are the icing on the cake. When CU endowed inanimate corporate legal entities with sentience whose free speech must be protected, it was a very small step to endow them with religious beliefs as well, which will be supported with the full power of the state.
2naSalit
(86,542 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)TygrBright
(20,758 posts)But they can't necessarily ignore the consequences of ignoring the law.
nitpickily,
Bright