Trump Admin and Corporate Personhood

[William Thornton]

Businesses, especially large corporations, are sensitive to public opinion. I doubt we will see a huge expansion of business claiming RL exemptions on this or other obama mandates. Those that are like Hobby Lobby et al, should have the right to do so under the same circumstances. Maybe the gummit could get out of mandating what business should do in regard to their employees health care.

Keith seems to think that if a majority of a closely held companies employees have no moral objection to contraceptions then the owners' religious views should be set aside. SCOTUS disagreed, properly, in my view, maintaining that it is not generally the gummit's prerogative to decide which religious views are worthy of protection and which are not. It seems inescapable to me that Keith believes that it is perfectly acceptable for gummit to make these decisions, but he can clarify that. In the case we are discussing (and I hate to say it again but it seems to slide past my old friend) Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the government (Burwell, HHS Secretary) did not argue that employees have a FA right to contraception, although critics of the decision complained that it allows employers to force their religious beliefs on employees which is as close as the argumentation gets to what Keith keeps opining. The simple answer to that objection is that government can easily overcome what is lost in the mandate and that employees are not so aggrieved as to require gummit to substantially burden their employer's religious beliefs.

Need any of us have to declare that none of us are legal scholars? Not to despair there is surely more litigation to come on these religious liberty issues.

[Sandy]

[Jim]

There's no such thing as corporate person-hood. Corporations involve many persons and so cannot be the conscience of them all. Corporation boards and officials decide not conscience but policy. Those persons who can't live with those policies, whether based on religion or otherwise, can take appropriate action, including lawsuits and anything else worth attaining a financial windfall, the usual aim. HL exercised a corporation policy and SCOTUS said okay. Not to have said that would
have amounted to chaos.

[Dave Roberts]

I personally think that the SCOTUS decision opens Pandora's box for potential legal problems and it certainly redefines religion from being a personal relationship with God, however you conceive of God, to being a political or a legal stance. In doing so, I believe SCOTUS is stripping the heart from religion in the name of politics.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

I think it is a weak argument to assert that there are many who claim that their religious liberty FA rights are violated when they are denied free contraceptives. It would support the argument if it could be shown that the gummit has been challenged on this basis. What was persuasive to SCOTUS is that some have religious objections to contraceptives and gummit may not, therefore, violate the FA in their cases by forcing them to act in violation of their religious views.

I regret that Keith plays the culture war card, since it is irrelevant to the discussion. I didn't pick the topic here.

For now the FA rights of closely held corporations cannot be separated from the FA rights of the owners. This is a good decision, in my view. Employees wanting contraceptives can obtain them easily elsewhere or choose to work for another employer.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[Dave Roberts]

It seems getting off into the contraceptive side of the HL decision and not the ultimate effect on religion is a side trip. The real concern needs to be how SCOTUS is defining religion and how the administration is redefining religious liberty.

[William Thornton]

[Haruo]

If corporations are persons, are they (or can they become) citizens? I ask in light of the recent purported* conferring of citizenship on a robot by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

*I say purported because I can find no solid documentation that it happened in legal fact, but also no solid documentation that it was essentially just a joke or a publicity stunt.

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

Here is where the problem begins with religious rights to define medical care.

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

Good questions actually. Looking at the way the SCOTUS majority opinion was written, legitimate questions because a corporation owner who was either JW or CS could decide that their religious convictions could apply to insurance coverage they decided to provide.

[Dave Roberts]

[Dave Roberts]

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

Great Facebook post. Thanks Dave.