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| Hobby Lobby’s Supreme Court birth control case: 6 things you need to know | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 25 2014, 02:59 AM (314 Views) | |
| Maxie | Mar 25 2014, 02:59 AM Post #1 |
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Oh,Goodness
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Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News On Tuesday morning' the Supreme Court will hear arguments from crafts store chain Hobby Lobby that Obamacare's contraceptive mandate violates the religious freedom of the company and its owners. The Greens, the evangelical Oklahomans who own Hobby Lobby, argue that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protects them from having to provide the so-called morning after pill and intrauterine devices to their 13'000 employees, as required by the Affordable Care Act. The government counters that it has a compelling interest in requiring all health insurance plans to provide contraceptives to women and that Hobby Lobby's religious beliefs do not trump their employees' right to access care. The Supreme Court's decision could dramatically broaden employers’ latitude to object to laws on religious freedom grounds and potentially restrict access to contraception for thousands of women employed by people who share the Greens’ religious objections. What are Hobby Lobby's chances? As always with the unpredictable Supreme Court, it's hard to say. On the one hand, government lawyers point out that a large commercial operation has never before won a claim that its religious beliefs exempt it from regulations that other companies must follow. Religious freedom as guaranteed under the 1993 law has typically been thought to extend solely to individuals and not for-profit companies. The government also argues that Hobby Lobby is a distinct legal entity separate from its owners and shareholders and thus can’t hold religious beliefs. But on the other hand, the Supreme Court under John Roberts has been very sympathetic to corporate interests, ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case that campaign finance laws infringed upon companies' First Amendment rights. The conservative-leaning court has also been favorable to religious liberty claims in general and may well side with Hobby Lobby and rule that Obamacare violates free exercise rights. What does Citizens United have to do with it? The controversial 2010 case struck down campaign finance laws that sought to limit corporations' involvement in political campaigns as a violation of their First Amendment rights. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, said that if corporations have speech rights, they also have religious freedom rights. "We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation's political expression, but not its religious expression'" 10th Circuit judges wrote in their decision. But the 3rd and 6th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have ruled that RFRA does not protect for-profit companies hoping to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage to employees. "We simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation - apart from its owners - can exercise religion," Judge Robert Cowen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit wrote for the majority. It remains to be seen if the justices will agree with the 10th Circuit that the Hobby Lobby case is in the same vein as Citizens United. If Hobby Lobby wins, will the contraceptive mandate be struck down entirely? Probably not, according to Timothy Jost, a law professor and health care reform expert at Washington and Lee University. Most large corporations would still be required to provide contraception in their health plans, but companies with religious objections would be granted exceptions if they stated specific religious objections. Reproductive rights organizations believe a ruling in Hobby Lobby's favor could mean that employers could also prevent women from receiving counseling from health care advisers about contraception during their doctor visits. Why are gay rights groups arguing against Hobby Lobby? More than 30 LGBT groups signed on to a statement condemning Hobby Lobby’s argument as "cut from the same cloth" as efforts in Arizona and other states to allow businesses to deny service to gays and lesbians if it violates the owners’ religious beliefs. The groups fear that expanding religious freedom claims to large businesses would lead to more discrimination against gay people. (University of Virginia law professor Doug Laycock disagrees, saying that few judges would uphold discrimination against gay people as a sincere religious belief.) Which lawyers are arguing the case? Obama's solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, will argue against Paul Clement, a star Supreme Court attorney for conservative causes, in the case. The men faced off against each other two years ago when House Republicans lost their bid to overturn Obamacare's individual mandate as unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts ultimately upheld the mandate as a tax in a split opinion. When will the court decide the Hobby Lobby case? This June. SOURCE:YAHOONews I believe this case could set a very dangerous precedent. The idea that a "corporation" can hold religious belief and act on it is stupid on it's face, and - if allowed - will result in vicious discrimination against LGBTs and people of color. I got news for Everypony: your belief in Fairy Tales is fine until you act to hurt someone else. Despite what that fatass drug addict and whore-chaser known as Rush Limbaugh thinks, birth control *is* a health issue. It's not about sluts. And truthfully, the age of Fairy Tales is almost over. What the Soviet Union could not accomplish by mandate, the Christian "Right" is accomplishing by sheer odiousness: the death of religion. People are tired of hate. The new generations, such as the so-called Millennials, are not interested. In less than 100 years, and probably no more than 50, Christianity will join the worship of the Viking gods on the ash-heap of history. Somepony on another site had a good observation: Hobby Lobby stores are chock full of items made in China. China has very strict family size laws and mandates birth control and abortion after a family has one child. Rather hypocritical of these Beyotches, ain't it? Edited by Maxie, Mar 25 2014, 09:15 AM.
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| Maxie | Apr 1 2014, 05:53 AM Post #2 |
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Oh,Goodness
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Jaysus H. Christmas, I'm gettin' ready to ponyslap some bitches:When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, the company's owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit. Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k). Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices. These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, the Greens object to covering Plan B, Ella, and IUDs because they claim that these products can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus—a process the Greens consider abortion. But researchers reject the notion that emergency contraceptive pills prevent implantation the implantation of a fertilized egg. Instead, they work by delaying ovulation or making it harder for sperm to swim to the egg. (Copper IUDs, which are also a form of birth control, can prevent implantation.) The Green's contention that the pills cause abortions is a central pillar of their argument for gutting the contraception mandate. Yet, for years, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plans did cover Plan B and Ella. It was only in 2012, when the Greens considered filing a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, that they dropped these drugs from the plan. A website Hobby Lobby set up to answer questions about the Supreme Court case states that its 401(k) plan comes with "a generous company match." In 2012, Hobby Lobby contributed $3.8 million to its employee savings plans, which had 13,400 employee participants at the beginning of that year. The information on Hobby Lobby's 401(k) investments is included in the company's 2013 annual disclosure to the Department of Labor. The records contain a list, dated December 31, 2012, of 24 funds that were included in its employer-sponsored retirement plan. MorningStar, an investment research firm, provided Mother Jones with the names of the companies in nine of those funds as of December 31, 2012. Each fund's portfolio consists of at least dozens if not hundreds of different holdings. All nine funds—which have assets of $73 million, or three-quarters of the Hobby Lobby retirement plan's total assets—contained holdings that clashed with the Greens' stated religious principles. Hobby Lobby and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the conservative group that provided Hobby Lobby with legal representation, did not respond to questions about these investments or whether Hobby Lobby has changed its retirement plan. In their Supreme Court complaint, Hobby Lobby's owners chronicle the many ways in which they avoid entanglements with objectionable companies. Hobby Lobby stores do not sell shot glasses, for example, and the Greens decline requests from beer distributors to back-haul beer on Hobby Lobby trucks. Similar options exist for companies that want to practice what's sometimes called faith-based investing. To avoid supporting companies that manufacture abortion drugs-or products such as alcohol or pornography-religious investors can turn to a cottage industry of mutual funds that screen out stocks that religious people might consider morally objectionable. The Timothy Plan and the Ave Maria Fund, for example, screen for companies that manufacture abortion drugs, support Planned Parenthood, or engage in embryonic stem cell research. Dan Hardt, a Kentucky financial planner who specializes in faith-based investing, says the performances of these funds are about the same as if they had not been screened. But Hobby Lobby's managers either were not aware of these options or chose not to invest in them. Seriously? |
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7:13 AM Jul 11