The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today -- in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. (Case number 13-354) -- that closely held corporations do have religious rights, and should be able to avoid complying with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) birth control mandate regulations.
The ruling appears to be narrow in scope, however, as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in an opinion for the majority that the opinion applies only to closely held corporations, and only to the birth control mandate provisions in the regulations that HHS wrote to implement basic preventive services benefits section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
Justice Alito wrote for the majority that a closely held corporation does have rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA).
RFRA prohibits the government from substantially interfering with a "person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability," unless the government shows that applying the burden furthers a "compelling government interest" and is the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest."
The family that owns Hobby Lobby Stores and Hobby Lobby's sister company, Mardel Inc., and the family that owns Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., wanted HHS and the courts to respect their ability to get protection from RFRA. The Hobby Lobby case majority agreed that closely held corporations have RFRA rights, but avoided saying that the ruling applies to other types of corporations.
Alito noted that Hobby Lobby and three similar companies affected by the ruling are not publicly traded and are each owned and controlled by members of a single family. Additionally, he said that the majority has not written a ruling that will apply to HHS vaccination mandates, blood transfusion mandates, or other mandates other than the birth control mandate.
"HHS points to no evidence that insurance plans in existence prior to the enactment of [PPACA] excluded coverage for such items," Alito wrote. "Nor has HHS provided evidence that any significant number of employers sought exemption, on religious grounds, from any of [PPACA's] coverage requirements other than the contraceptive mandate."
Critics of the idea that RFRA can apply to companies -- including two dissenting Supreme Court justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor -- argued that RFRA provides religious rights only for individual people, not for companies.
Two other justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kegan -- said the Hobby Lobby case plaintiffs' challenge to the HHS birth control mandate fails on its merits, but they said they did not need to decide whether for-profit corporations or the owners of for-profit corporations can bring RFRA claims.
In a concurring opinion supporting the majority decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the Hobby Lobby opinion is not as sweeping as Ginsburg and Sotomayor fear. According to Kennedy, HHS at least had an obligation to show that the mandate was the least restrictive means for achieving the goal of providing low cost access to contraceptives - and it did not do that.
The government already lets nonprofit employers avoid paying directly for contraceptive benefits, and that shows there is a less restrictive approach HHS could have used to accommodate the needs of closely held for-profit employers with objections to the birth control mandate, Kennedy wrote.
Not surprisingly, Democrats disagree with today's ruling and do not appear to see any political downside to taking on the decision. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out an email shortly after the ruling in a fundraising effort, and several vulnerable red-state Democrats up for reelection were quick to criticize the decision.
"It is shameful that a woman’s access to contraception is even up for debate in the year 2014,” Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) said today. “The choice about whether to use birth control should be between a woman and her doctor, not her boss, and no employer should be allowed to interfere with a woman’s access to contraception."
Republicans applauded the decision. "The Obama administration cannot trample on the religious freedoms that Americans hold dear,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
The Kentucky Republican also took the opportunity to deride ObamaCare as “the single worst piece of legislation to pass in the last 50 years.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the decision is “another defeat for an administration that has repeatedly crossed constitutional lines in pursuit of its big government objectives.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a potential 2016 GOP presidential nominee, said the decision is “a repudiation of the Obama administration’s untenable position that people with sincerely held religious beliefs should be forced to comply with an unconstitutional mandate while a parade of waivers, exemptions, and delays are granted for purely commercial and political interests.”
Editor's Note: Generally this blog does not take sides in political issues, but I offer the following remarks for readers to consider:
1) It is disheartening to me that both political sides continue to demonize each other and further the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. Political wedge issues such as abortion and contraceptives serve as provocation to distract the citizenry from common agendas that both sides support and carry out effectively. It seems inappropriate to me that politicians on both sides make inflammatory statements designed to incite and divide.
2) Senator Hagan misleads her followers when she remarks that "It is shameful that a woman’s access to contraception is even up for debate in the year 2014." Most reasonable people hearing that comment would assume that Hobby Lobby Stores did not want its employees having access to any contraceptives; yet further inspection reveals that Hobby Lobby objected to only a handful of contraceptives available - those that work to abort an already conceived embryo (not contraceptives used to prevent conception). Hobby Lobby's health plan covers 80% of available contraceptives under the PPACA, but Senator Hagan would not want to be bothered by that detail with such a great opportunity to grandstand.
Until next time,
Andrew Herman, President
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