Trump Admin and Corporate Personhood

[Dave Roberts]

Here is a new addition to the debate. Can corporations traded in public domains make religious claims? Interesting possibilities emerge here.

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

How would you decide, if some shareholders held a particular religious perspective, and others did not, which one prevails and how would the "religious identity" of the corporation be determined?

[Haruo]

It would hardly be heaven without McDonald's! And if corporations can't make religious claims, how can it (McDonald's, that is) be saved? It's really that simple, folks! The pursuit of happiness.

Happy Meals for Communion!

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Doesn't help your argument on religious liberty to toss in extraneous stuff. You can read the HL decision. A majority of the court was persuaded on the issue. If religious liberty isn't protected for a minority view then the whole concept is eliminated but the discussion here was on corporations being afforded such rights not the rights themselves. I don't think you are up to speed on this.

[William Thornton]

Here's the Hobby Lobby argument: Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged that corporate personhood is just a legal construct but argued that protecting a corporation’s free exercise amounts to protecting the exercise of the actual persons who own it. As for whether that rule also applies to publicly traded corporations with more diffuse ownership, Alito maintained that the question of their religious exercise was not on the table at that time.

A broader religious exercise exemption for widely held corporations will have to be decided judicially, I expect. When we were under Obama, businesses had to fight to protect their religious exercise. Under Trump they don't. Elections have consequences...someone said. Like many church/state issues, there are competing rights here. We will see where it goes. Anyone can posit hypotheticals and build a case.

[Dave Roberts]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Perhaps you could interact with Alito and the other four judges. See below. The broader issue will be litigated. For now, The HL decision decides it. Win some elections. Replace some judges. Or, just keep complaining about current law.

You call,it a brush off. I say you fail to approach the salient points of the HL decision.

[Jim]

[Dave Roberts]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Well, I'd already read those, bro, several years ago.

Notice that the most lib judges Ginsburg and Sotomayor aren't joined in one important section of the dissent, although Breyer and Kagan are dissenting votes.

Note also that the majority decision is limited to the contraceptive mandate. I think that the first amendment is important enough to make congress do a workaround if they think providing contraceptives to the populace rather than substantially burdening the FA rights of employers and forcing them to do so. And, please, we're dealing with the sovereign laws of the good old USA. What European nations do is irrelevant, though lib judges sometimes make that appeal.

More later.

Here's your problem: Dave raised a good question about the Trump admin expanding this. Your lower antitrump impulses compelled you to avoid this issue, which is prickly in many ways and on which you and I would agree in part, and to toss out the old standby culture war complaint along with the wage rate and even the last hope of ihatetrumpers, the 25th amendment. If your aim to to back up your garbage truck and dump all that out, I'll yield the field to you. OTOH, this narrow religious liberty issue is interesting and important and worth discussing.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

What religious right of employees was raised in the case and have employees filed a first amendment lawsuit in response to being denied those rights? You make an equivalence of employees being denied employer paid contraception and the employer being forced to do that which he says violates his FA rights.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

I didn't ask about religious views of employees but their FA rights. I'm off to a church meeting and will reread the dissent but I didn't see a FA assertion by employees. Manifestly, employees were denied contraceptives which are easily obtained elsewhere. The court said that the burden on the FA rights of the employer was substantial and outweighed the loss to employees.

You are deep into error here by your test of which side has greater numbers that are harmed. The whole concept of RL protections fails if affected minority rights may be set aside by majority views.

I'll state again that you will have to point me to a FA issue with employees. Ginsburg wrote of women being able to fully participate in the economy, etc., but not that those whose moral views do not inform them that certain contraceptives are immoral should be given free contraceptives by their employer so that the former's religious views are protected. That might be your view but not one that was made in the case.

Taking your argument farther, surely you don't believe that employers should be mandated by government to pay for the abortions of their employees, since some employees have religious views that prebirth babies should be killed and if in the majority, these employees should have their religious views protected.

It's not an insult but it doesn't look like you understand either the hobby lobby case or first amendment religious rights.

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

You're all over the lot with some interesting thoughts but you will have to show me where *in the case we are discussing* what *you* call a "FA issue of the religious kind" is so called by the government lawyers, Ginsburg or the other dissenting justices. Such may be in the docs linked but I haven't found it. If not, I didn't sign on to discuss your opinions of what you thought should have been the salient points of the hobby lobby case.

My question was: can you point me to where the *first amendment religious rights* of the employees was asserted in the hobby lobby case? I'm not much interested in your speculations about the religious *views* of HL employees or your armchair opinion of how "many people" view having an unwanted child. These are irrelevant to this discussion.mYou can speculate all you want and your ruminations are interesting about the morality of HL employees but I don't believe this was an issue in the case. Neither do I think that anyone has asserted a religious liberty right to receive contraceptives from their employer. What all sides have acknowledged is that employers being forced to provide contraceptives has raised a first amendment issue and SCOTUS felt the need to try and clarify the law on it.

[William Thornton]