SB1062, Hobby Lobs...Religious Exemptions Q: Do Corporations have Religious Beliefs?

[regent]

Of course corporations are people, do they not bleed, cough, go to the bathroom like the rest of us, and the biggie, do corporations not have souls. Sure corporations tend to watch their dollars more and expect to pay big-time for legislative favors but if liberals realized that helping corporations is just like helping the neighborhood church we'd be better off. We must remember that God and the Supreme Court gave souls to corporations or they couldn't exist.

 

[edthecynic]

I must say, we've come a long way from conservatives puffed out with Creeping Sharia law in America...


to Yay! Sharia!!!

Conservatives of course must take care to not lapse into their normal routine of inconsistent hypocrisy, where on the one hand they claim that corporations are persons when there is a perceived benefit (Citizens United), and on the other hand claim that corporations are not persons when the case law doesn’t work to their advantage (Employment Division v. Smith (1990)).

Exactly, the whole principal of incorporation is to separate the corporate entity from the individual entity in order to protect the assets of the individual from the debts of the corporation, but now they want to reunite them when it suites them. If corporations are not individuals as far as debts are concerned then they are not individuals as far as religion is concerned.

 

[The Rabbi]

Of course corporations are people, do they not bleed, cough, go to the bathroom like the rest of us, and the biggie, do corporations not have souls. Sure corporations tend to watch their dollars more and expect to pay big-time for legislative favors but if liberals realized that helping corporations is just like helping the neighborhood church we'd be better off. We must remember that God and the Supreme Court gave souls to corporations or they couldn't exist.

However they can file for discrimination under the 14th Amendment. So I guess they do have rights like anyone else. Sort of.

 

[The Rabbi]

And here's the incomparable editorial page of the WSJ this morning laying in with their usual sense and knowledge. What a welcome change from the ignorance and stupidity of the lo-lo posters on this site!

March 25, 2014 7:05 p.m. ET

The Affordable Care Act returned to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, as the Justices heard a major challenge to the law's birth-control mandate. Five and maybe even six Justices across ideological lines seemed discomfited by the Administration's cramped conception of religious liberty.

In 2012 the Health and Human Services Department published a regulation interpreting an ObamaCare provision to require all for-profit employer health plans to cover 20 contraception methods, including four that some religious believers consider abortifacients and sterilization. The combined cases of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius are challenging the mandate under a 1993 law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Opinion Video

Becket Fund For Religious Liberty senior counsel Eric Baxter reports on oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Photo credit: Associated Press.

RFRA was passed by a unanimous House, 97 to three in the Senate, and signed by Bill Clinton after the Supreme Court restricted religious liberty in a 1990 case. The statute merely holds that when government interferes with the free exercise of religion, it must narrowly tailor its regulations to serve a compelling interest and impose the "least burdensome" option.

The left-right coalition behind this legal doctrine has since collapsed and liberals are now working diligently to undermine the law. The Obama Administration was pushing its "war on women" election theme in 2012 and went out of its way to harm people of faith who are out of political favor.

HHS did exempt churches from the mandate, and religious nonprofits can apply for a quasi-exemption, which is being litigated separately. But the Administration's remarkable argument is that if a business is incorporated and for-profit, it forfeits normal constitutional rights. Hobby Lobby is a chain of craft stores that is a closely held, family-run corporation that tries to operate in accord with biblical principles.

Trying to distinguish between for-profit and nonprofit corporate forms for this regulatory purpose is constitutionally unprecedented. Corporations are often treated as "persons" for legal purposes, such as protecting free speech, and prosecutors can indict entire corporations for breaking laws. As Chief Justice John Roberts observed, minority-owned businesses can bring racial discrimination lawsuits. So why can't Christian- or Muslim-owned businesses exercise religion? Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had no good answer.

Conestoga Wood Specialties founder Anthony Hahn delivers a brief statement to the news media after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Getty Images

Liberal Justices rolled out a parade of dubious hypotheticals, arguing that if a business can invoke religion to refuse to pay for abortifacients, couldn't it also refuse to pay for blood transfusions or vaccinations? "Could an employer preclude the use of those items as well?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the day's first question.

Yet no one is "precluding" anything. Contraception is cheap, plentiful and covered by most health plans. Most corporations are run for profit, not piety. Mr. Verrilli claimed the mandate is necessary to promote public health and gender equality, but HHS could have aided those goals without forcing a minority of business owners with moral aims to implicate themselves in what they consider to be grave moral wrongs.

HHS itself recognized religious sensitivity to the mandate by exempting some businesses but not others, and it could have extended the same conscience accommodations to for-profits as it did to nonprofits. Congress also could have created a free birth-control program for the poor or employees of religious institutions, or increased subsidies for Planned Parenthood. Even liberal Justice Stephen Breyer wondered whether the mandate was "the less restrictive way" to provide birth control, while Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that HHS believed "the health-care coverage was not that important" if some organizations already get an exemption.

The courts can also assess on a case-by-case basis which corporations really do operate on religious principles and thus deserve RFRA free-exercise protection. They will be the few Hobby Lobbies, not Exxon.

The Administration's legal claims have no such limiting principle. Justice Samuel Alito pointed to a statute in Denmark that was a de facto prohibition of kosher and Halal butchering in the name of animal rights. If corporations lack religious rights, who could sue to overturn such a ban? Justice Kennedy carried the point further and suggested, what's to stop Congress from mandating that businesses must pay for abortions?

Mr. Verrilli agreed that "if such a law like that were enacted, then you're right, under our theory the for-profit corporation wouldn't have an ability to sue." He waved off that possibility by saying Congress wouldn't pass an abortion mandate, but this merely underscores the radicalism of the Administration's position. If RFRA doesn't protect Hobby Lobby, then the law is as meaningless as Justice Sotomayor and Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg seem to think it should be.

More at the source.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Isn't that why Heritage and the GOP came up with the individual mandate in the first place?

I dunno. Can't speak for either group.

Original document where Heritage created Obamacare individual mandate

It is one of the reasons

Once Obamacare is a success and universally accepted the GOP will be claiming that it was their idea all along!

 

[The Rabbi]

I dunno. Can't speak for either group.

Original document where Heritage created Obamacare individual mandate

It is one of the reasons

Once Obamacare is a success and universally accepted the GOP will be claiming that it was their idea all along!

That will happen right after pigs learn how to fly.

 

[regent]

If we passed a constitutional amendment saying that corporations are not allowed to have abortions, or practice birth control would that ease their fears? In short, corporations would be allowed to keep their virginity. On the rape issue, however, I think the corporations should be on their own, in fact, I think sometimes the corporations are more the rapers rather than the rapees.

 

[The Rabbi]

If we passed a constitutional amendment saying that corporations are not allowed to have abortions, or practice birth control would that ease their fears? In short, corporations would be allowed to keep their virginity. On the rape issue, however, I think the corporations should be on their own, in fact, I think sometimes the corporations are more the rapers rather than the rapees.

Libs coming unglued. I love it!

 

[Derideo_Te]

The real danger is not so much "corporate religious beliefs" but exactly which "religious belief" this hinges upon.

Essentially if Hobby Lobby prevails then "life begins at conception" will be enshrined in the Constitution.

The ramifications of that concept will impact the entire legal system in this nation.

If a fetus has Constitutional Rights then if a pregnant woman were to commit a heinous crime she could not be incarcerated without infringing on the rights of the fetus.

Any tourist who visits the Disney World and falls pregnant can claim US citizenship for the fetus.

Those are just 2 examples of some of the legal issues that will arise. Hobby Lobby is demanding that the SCOTUS accept their religious belief as the basis for Constitutional Rights. If the SCOTUS rules in their favor they will have violated the 1st Amendment by endorsing a religion.

 

[The Rabbi]

The real danger is not so much "corporate religious beliefs" but exactly which "religious belief" this hinges upon.

Essentially if Hobby Lobby prevails then "life begins at conception" will be enshrined in the Constitution.

The ramifications of that concept will impact the entire legal system in this nation.

If a fetus has Constitutional Rights then if a pregnant woman were to commit a heinous crime she could not be incarcerated without infringing on the rights of the fetus.

Any tourist who visits the Disney World and falls pregnant can claim US citizenship for the fetus.

Those are just 2 examples of some of the legal issues that will arise. Hobby Lobby is demanding that the SCOTUS accept their religious belief as the basis for Constitutional Rights. If the SCOTUS rules in their favor they will have violated the 1st Amendment by endorsing a religion.

You're forgetting the end of the world as we know it, and total Armaggedon.
Libs unglued. I love it!

 

[Erand7899]

Religious beliefs and devotions are formed in the “minds and hearts of individuals,” so said a recent court ruling.

How far can a fictitious entity that is invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and formed to create profits for it's shareholders go in exercising it's Freedom of Religion?

All the way, just as if it were a flesh and blood, mind and heart individual?

Not true. A commonly held corporation, meaning an entity that is owned primrily by the public at large, is amoral and non religious, for the simple reason that it is an inanimate object, with no ability to reason or believe. All of the persons working at a public corporation are employees of that corportation, including the CEO and the board of directors. The employer is an everchanging collection of stockholders, few of which have any say in the operation of the corporation.

However, there are corporations which are owned by a single individual, a family, or a small group of like minded individuals. These corporations can, and often do, exhibit the morality and the religious beliefs of the private owners, just like any other individual business owner or partnership. Hobby Lobby and the Green family fall into this group, and that is what the court is debating.

The right of a public corporation to freedom of speech, does not equate in any way to the right of a public corporation to freedom of religion.

 

[Derideo_Te]

The real danger is not so much "corporate religious beliefs" but exactly which "religious belief" this hinges upon.

Essentially if Hobby Lobby prevails then "life begins at conception" will be enshrined in the Constitution.

The ramifications of that concept will impact the entire legal system in this nation.

If a fetus has Constitutional Rights then if a pregnant woman were to commit a heinous crime she could not be incarcerated without infringing on the rights of the fetus.

Any tourist who visits the Disney World and falls pregnant can claim US citizenship for the fetus.

Those are just 2 examples of some of the legal issues that will arise. Hobby Lobby is demanding that the SCOTUS accept their religious belief as the basis for Constitutional Rights. If the SCOTUS rules in their favor they will have violated the 1st Amendment by endorsing a religion.

You're forgetting the end of the world as we know it, and total Armaggedon.
Libs unglued. I love it!

So you have no objection to losing your 1st Amendment rights?

 

[bedowin62]

The real danger is not so much "corporate religious beliefs" but exactly which "religious belief" this hinges upon.

Essentially if Hobby Lobby prevails then "life begins at conception" will be enshrined in the Constitution.

The ramifications of that concept will impact the entire legal system in this nation.

If a fetus has Constitutional Rights then if a pregnant woman were to commit a heinous crime she could not be incarcerated without infringing on the rights of the fetus.

Any tourist who visits the Disney World and falls pregnant can claim US citizenship for the fetus.

Those are just 2 examples of some of the legal issues that will arise. Hobby Lobby is demanding that the SCOTUS accept their religious belief as the basis for Constitutional Rights. If the SCOTUS rules in their favor they will have violated the 1st Amendment by endorsing a religion.

You're forgetting the end of the world as we know it, and total Armaggedon.
Libs unglued. I love it!

So you have no objection to losing your 1st Amendment rights?

THEY SKY IS FALLING the sky is falling!!!!


lol

 

[Derideo_Te]

Religious beliefs and devotions are formed in the “minds and hearts of individuals,” so said a recent court ruling.

How far can a fictitious entity that is invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and formed to create profits for it's shareholders go in exercising it's Freedom of Religion?

All the way, just as if it were a flesh and blood, mind and heart individual?

Not true. A commonly held corporation, meaning an entity that is owned primrily by the public at large, is amoral and non religious, for the simple reason that it is an inanimate object, with no ability to reason or believe. All of the persons working at a public corporation are employees of that corportation, including the CEO and the board of directors. The employer is an everchanging collection of stockholders, few of which have any say in the operation of the corporation.

However, there are corporations which are owned by a single individual, a family, or a small group of like minded individuals. These corporations can, and often do, exhibit the morality and the religious beliefs of the private owners, just like any other individual business owner or partnership. Hobby Lobby and the Green family fall into this group, and that is what the court is debating.

The right of a public corporation to freedom of speech, does not equate in any way to the right of a public corporation to freedom of religion.

It is a violation of the 1st Amendment for the SCOTUS to endorse the religious beliefs of any person irrespective of whether or not that is an individual or a corporation.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Religious beliefs and devotions are formed in the “minds and hearts of individuals,” so said a recent court ruling.

How far can a fictitious entity that is invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and formed to create profits for it's shareholders go in exercising it's Freedom of Religion?

All the way, just as if it were a flesh and blood, mind and heart individual?

Except it's not a "fictitious entity". Corporations exist . . . and they are owned and run and staffed by individual human beings, who have every right to make decisions and choices about how they guide that corporation according to the same beliefs they use in their personal lives.

 

[Erand7899]

I dunno. Can't speak for either group.

Original document where Heritage created Obamacare individual mandate

It is one of the reasons

Once Obamacare is a success and universally accepted the GOP will be claiming that it was their idea all along!

Liberal/socialists always want to shift the blame, or at a minimum, diffuse the blame for their social policy failures. Obamacare was passed and signed into law by Democrats, without a single Republican vote. You all own it, lock, stock and barrel. Heritage did not pass it. Romney didn't pass it. Democrats did, and now they are trying to run away from it.

 

[dblack]

Religious beliefs and devotions are formed in the “minds and hearts of individuals,” so said a recent court ruling.

How far can a fictitious entity that is invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and formed to create profits for it's shareholders go in exercising it's Freedom of Religion?

All the way, just as if it were a flesh and blood, mind and heart individual?

Not true. A commonly held corporation, meaning an entity that is owned primrily by the public at large, is amoral and non religious, for the simple reason that it is an inanimate object, with no ability to reason or believe. All of the persons working at a public corporation are employees of that corportation, including the CEO and the board of directors. The employer is an everchanging collection of stockholders, few of which have any say in the operation of the corporation.

However, there are corporations which are owned by a single individual, a family, or a small group of like minded individuals. These corporations can, and often do, exhibit the morality and the religious beliefs of the private owners, just like any other individual business owner or partnership. Hobby Lobby and the Green family fall into this group, and that is what the court is debating.

The right of a public corporation to freedom of speech, does not equate in any way to the right of a public corporation to freedom of religion.

It is a violation of the 1st Amendment for the SCOTUS to endorse the religious beliefs of any person irrespective of whether or not that is an individual or a corporation.

This would only be the case if the rigged up some kind of ad hoc exclusion. If, instead, they strike down the contraception mandate, for everyone, it's a moot concern.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Religious beliefs and devotions are formed in the “minds and hearts of individuals,” so said a recent court ruling.

How far can a fictitious entity that is invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and formed to create profits for it's shareholders go in exercising it's Freedom of Religion?

All the way, just as if it were a flesh and blood, mind and heart individual?

Except it's not a "fictitious entity". Corporations exist . . . and they are owned and run and staffed by individual human beings, who have every right to make decisions and choices about how they guide that corporation according to the same beliefs they use in their personal lives.

Corporations are "fictitious persons" therefore they are not entitled to the same rights as flesh and blood people.

If the SCOTUS declares that a corporation has the right to exercise a religious belief then why can't a corporation have the right to vote?

How many corporations would then be created that could then swing a close election? Would you be happy to discover that your congressional representative had lost their seat in November because someone from the opposite party registered a couple of thousand corporations and used those votes to beat your representative?

 

[Derideo_Te]

Not true. A commonly held corporation, meaning an entity that is owned primrily by the public at large, is amoral and non religious, for the simple reason that it is an inanimate object, with no ability to reason or believe. All of the persons working at a public corporation are employees of that corportation, including the CEO and the board of directors. The employer is an everchanging collection of stockholders, few of which have any say in the operation of the corporation.

However, there are corporations which are owned by a single individual, a family, or a small group of like minded individuals. These corporations can, and often do, exhibit the morality and the religious beliefs of the private owners, just like any other individual business owner or partnership. Hobby Lobby and the Green family fall into this group, and that is what the court is debating.

The right of a public corporation to freedom of speech, does not equate in any way to the right of a public corporation to freedom of religion.

It is a violation of the 1st Amendment for the SCOTUS to endorse the religious beliefs of any person irrespective of whether or not that is an individual or a corporation.

This would only be the case if the rigged up some kind of ad hoc exclusion. If, instead, they strike down the contraception mandate, for everyone, it's a moot concern.

So every woman must be denied a healthcare benefit because of the religious beliefs of a few? That makes the SCOTUS decision an endorsement of religion which will be derided in Law Schools for centuries to come. Roberts has already demonstrated that he doesn't want that kind of record for "his court". I don't see him going that route.

 

[dblack]

It is a violation of the 1st Amendment for the SCOTUS to endorse the religious beliefs of any person irrespective of whether or not that is an individual or a corporation.

This would only be the case if the rigged up some kind of ad hoc exclusion. If, instead, they strike down the contraception mandate, for everyone, it's a moot concern.

So every woman must be denied a healthcare benefit because of the religious beliefs of a few?

What? No. Where did you get that out of my post?