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You can bet on hand-wringing and outrage about judicial activism and political motives behind the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case but, in fact, this case was all but decided in 1993 when Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Both the liberal justices who dissented in the case, and others who attack the decision as conservative activism, should instead be aiming their arguments at Congress for enacting that law, because today’s court opinion is a relatively straightforward and narrow application of the RFRA.
Unhappy with a Supreme Court decision that narrowed religious freedom (Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 1990), Congress took matters into its own hands and passed the RFRA. Whereas the Court in Smith said that “neutral, generally applicable laws could be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest, “ the RFRA provides that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” Few may understand that Congress, as a co-equal branch with the Supreme Court under the Constitution, has the power to pass laws and, in some cases, thereby alter constitutional interpretation through legislation.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, then, established a high bar for any law impacting religious liberty, saying that not only must the government have a compelling interest in doing so, but it must use the “least restrictive alternative” available to accomplish its purposes. That is to say, if there is another way to accomplish the government’s purpose with a lesser restriction on religious liberty, that is what is required. In the case of contraceptive services, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) had already created such an alternative for religious nonprofits (churches and religious associations), providing that insurance administrators make those services available to individuals without imposing any cost-sharing on the religious organization. The Court in Hobby Lobby simply, and narrowly, said: Apply that same alternative to family businesses that have religious objections to the contraceptive services required by the ACA. Nothing dramatic or even surprising here—any politics or activism came in passing the RFRA, not in the Supreme Court’s application of it in Hobby Lobby.
Read the full story: www.forbes.com
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