Showing posts with label Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Show all posts

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Memo to Harry Reid: Clarence Thomas is NOT ‘White’ --Reid blasts the "5 white men" in the Hobby Lobby decision

July 10, 2014 Larry O'Connor , Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby 0 Comments
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas &
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
By Larry O'Connor, Jul. 9, 2014, Washington Free Beacon

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to take action this month to try to combat the recent “Hobby Lobby” ruling from the Supreme Court.

In his remarks he referred to the decision and decried the “five white men” who rendered it. But Justice Clarence Thomas is African-American.

“The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determine by virtue of five white men,” Reid said.

“This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous and we are going to do something about it. People are going to have to walk down here and vote,” the Nevada Democrat added.

Mr. Thomas joined justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito in the majority decision.

While all five are not white, they are all Roman Catholic.

Read the full story:  www.washingtontimes.com

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Sunday, July 6, 2014

Forbes: Hobby Lobby Decision Should Not Have Been A Surprise --The scary thing is that 4 dissented

July 06, 2014 David Davenport , Forbes.com 0 Comments
By David Davenport, Jun. 30, 2014, Forbes.com

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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Friday, July 4, 2014

Poll: Voters Support Hobby Lobby Decision By 10-Point Margin --Not buying the "war on women drivel"

July 04, 2014 Christianity , Contraception 0 Comments
By John McCormack, Jul. 2, 2014, Weeklystandard.com

A new Rasmussen poll finds that 49 percent of American voters support a religious exemption to the federal government's contraception mandate, while 39 percent oppose such an exemption:
Half of voters agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that a business owner should be able to opt out of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate if it violates his or her religious beliefs. But most also say a company’s level of contraceptive coverage is not that important to their decision to work there. 
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% of Likely U.S. Voters think businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient. Slightly more (47%) say companies should not be required to meet this contraceptive mandate included in the new national health care law. Ten percent (10%) are not sure.
A recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll also found that a plurality of Americans supported Hobby Lobby, but poll results have varied wildly, likely because of differences in how the questions were phrased.

Here are the questions Rasmussen posed to likely voters:
Should businesses be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient?
Read the full story:  www.weeklystandard.com

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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Hobby Lobby Ruling About Abortion--Not Contraceptives --Mis-reported as "case about contraception"

July 01, 2014 Christianity , Contraception 1 Comments
By Mona Charen, Jun. 30, 2014, Suntimes.com

The major media’s account of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case was typical of the way the case has been misreported from the start. The New York Times headline read, “Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations.” Politico led with “SCOTUS sides with Hobby Lobby on birth control.” Others were similar.

That’s not what the case was about. The litigants — the Green and Hahn families, owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties respectively — did not have religious objections to contraception. They might have if they were Catholic, but they weren’t, and they didn’t.

The Hahns are Mennonites and the Greens Christians of no particular denomination. Both families provided coverage for contraceptives in their health plans. Hobby Lobby provided coverage for 18 different methods of birth control. What both the Greens and the Hahns objected to were the regulations promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services that would have required them, on pain of severe fines, to cover four more methods, including the morning after pill, that the litigants consider abortifacients.

No matter how many times the press calls this a case about contraception, the truth is that it was about abortion.

The HHS regulations exempted some corporations from the regulations, including churches, some nonprofits and the “exclusively religious activities of any religious order.” Religion, the government essentially argued, was something that people do on Sunday mornings or in specifically religious organizations like Catholic Charities. But a for-profit corporation, the government argued, could not possibly “exercise religion.”

Yet, as Justice Samuel Alito argued for the majority, people do not lose their free exercise rights when they form for-profit organizations. “A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends.” And just because a corporation is organized to earn a profit doesn’t mean that it cannot perform religious or other laudable, nonprofit maximizing goals. Corporations may “take costly pollution-control and energy conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits.”

There were good constitutional arguments for ruling that the HHS mandate violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The Constitution itself showed deference to the religious objections of Quakers and Mennonites at the time of adoption to swearing oaths. The Constitution accordingly requires that officeholders “swear or affirm” their oath of office.

But the Supreme Court did not reach constitutional questions, because perfectly clear statutes, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, required the government to give the broadest possible scope to the free exercise of religion.

Read the full story:  www.suntimes.com

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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Why Libertarians And People Of Faith Are United And Divided Over Obamacare Contraception Mandate --Gov't butt out...

April 05, 2014 Contraception Mandate , Fred Lucas 0 Comments
By Fred Lucas, Apr. 4, 2014, The Blaze

The First Amendment protects religious freedom, the primary argument against the Obamacare contraception mandate. The same amendment also protects freedom of association, mentioned nowhere in the legal case against it.

So some libertarians — who generally oppose the mandate — are not entirely of one mind on the legal basis of the challenge in the Hobby Lobby case awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As a lawyer, I have to argue on what we have, and with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, we have a stronger chance of prevailing than with an argument over freedom of association or even economic freedom,” said Ilya Shapiro, an attorney with the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think tank. Shapiro filed a brief in the Hobby Lobby case.

 Read the full story:  www.theblaze.com


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Thursday, March 27, 2014

"OCare: No Insurance Is Better than Unapproved Insurance" --"Wrong" insurance penalized 18x's more than no insurance.

March 27, 2014 Health Insurance , Obamacare 0 Comments
By Jeffrey H. Anderson, Mar. 26, 2014, The Weekly Standard

Would President Obama prefer that you have health insurance of which he doesn’t approve, or no health insurance at all?  Well, based on the penalties in play under his signature legislation, it would appear that he prefers for you to have no insurance at all than to have the “wrong” insurance (as defined, of course, by his administration).

As those who have been following the Hobby Lobby case—argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday—know, under Obamacare, the “wrong” kind of insurance includes policies that don’t provide “free” coverage of, among other things, the abortion drug ella, contraception, and sterilization (but only sterilization for women).  (Coverage of cancer or heart disease—apparently being less essential—need not be “free.”)   

Read the full story:  www.weeklystandard.com
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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Post: Media bias in covering conception-Obamacare SCOTUS

March 26, 2014 Birth Control , Christianity 0 Comments
By Katie Yoder, Mar. 26, 2014
In the case of Hobby Lobby’s fight for religious freedom, what you report is just as important as who you report – at least for the broadcast networks.
The evening news programs lavishly quoted the liberal female Supreme Court justices in their Hobby Lobby reports yesterday. Among ABC, CBS and NBC, the nets recognized only one conservative justice’s opinion: Chief Justice John Roberts.
On Tuesday, March 25, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments from craft-store Hobby Lobby and cabinet-maker Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., both owned by Christian families, in the wake of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. The mandate would force employers to supply contraception and abortion-inducing drugs for employees regardless of religious belief. 

The evening of the 25th during “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley,” Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford offered the sole airtime to a conservative justice. Crawford noted Justice Roberts, “suggested the law’s contraception requirement forced religious business owners to violate their conscience” and quoted Justice Roberts warning “they [business owners] have to pay for methods of contraception that they believe provide abortions."
Read the full story:  www.newsbusters.org
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"Andrea Mitchell Slams Hobby Lobby: 'What Right Do They Have to Interfere With Medical Decisions by Women?'"

"Andrea Mitchell Slams Hobby Lobby: 'What Right Do They Have to Interfere With Medical Decisions by Women?'"

March 26, 2014 ACLU , Andrea Mitchell 0 Comments
By Kyle Drennen, Mar. 25, 2014, Newsbusters

On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell interrogated attorney Mark Rienzi for representing Hobby Lobby in the Supreme Court case against the ObamaCare contraception mandate: "What right do they have, again, to interfere with medical decisions by women?...I mean, this gets to the whole issue of women's health and why should women be discriminated against in ways that other medical beneficiaries are not?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Rienzi pushed back: "No one's discriminating against women, Andrea, all they're saying is that, you're right, these are personal decisions, these are things that people can come to different judgments about. But the government is trying to say – they're gonna force people to be involved in it whether they want to or not."
Read the full story:  www.newsbusters.org
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"Supreme Court Women Raise Questions on Contraception Coverage" --Ladies, why REQUIRE employer to provide anything?

March 26, 2014 Birth Control , Christianity 0 Comments
By Charlotte Alter, Mar. 25, 2014

The three women of the Supreme Court dominated questioning at the beginning of Tuesday’s oral arguments in a case pitting religious business owners against the new health care reform law’s mandate that employer-provided insurance cover contraceptive care. 

The court case will determine whether Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft store chain, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet company, can be exempted from providing contraception coverage to female employees through federally mandated health insurance policies. 

Supreme Court proceedings make for notoriously difficult and unreliable predictors of how justices might rule on a case. That said, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasted no time in pressing the corporate challengers, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s live blog of the oral arguments.

Read the full story:  www.time.com
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"‘Bigotry Disguised as Freedom’: The LA Times, The Guardian, Daily Beast Vs. Hobby Lobby"

March 26, 2014 Birth Control , Christianity 0 Comments
By Kristine Marsh, Mar. 25, 2014, Newsbusters
Out: First Amendment protections guaranteeing religious liberty. Oh, and the right to free association. In: The inalienable right to have strangers pony up for your sex life.
Welcome to our new constitutional order, if some major American newspapers and left-leaning sites have their way. In the view of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and left-wing blogs, Christian business owners are trying to take away the right to contraception, by asserting their right to religious liberty. 
With the Hobby Lobby case coming before the Supreme Court Tuesday, March 25, the usual suspects of social liberalism have been up in arms. Over 50 businesses have filed a brief against the HHS Mandate which requires businesses with over 15 employees to provide employees with insurance plans that cover all types of contraception, including abortifacients. According to the media, the notion that pro-life business owners would contest this is “absurd” “bigotry”  and “religion run amok.”
So we get to hear from America’s most famous consumer of birth control and Obama’s favorite student Sandra Fluke, along with abortion activists Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood, NARAL President Ilyse Hogue. For good measure, the gay left weighed in too.
Read the full story:  www.newsbusters.org

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