Here is the Hobby Lobby Case in a nutshell ( now being heard by the Supreme Court ):
Who are the families challenging the HHS mandate?
The family of David Green founded Hobby Lobby in 1972, after two years of making frames at their kitchen table and selling arts and crafts out of their garage. What started as a humble enterprise has grown to more than 500 stores in 41 states, employing more than 16,000 individuals. Hobby Lobby stores close on Sundays and are open only 66 hours a week so that their employees can spend more time with their families. The Greens’ Evangelical Christian faith influences not only the way they care for employees but their investment in communities through partnerships with numerous Christian ministries.
Norman and Elizabeth Hahn own Conestoga Wood Specialties, a second-generation business in Lancaster County, Pa. The Hahns’ work is a family affair, as their sons and their families also work at the cabinet-manufacturing business. With 950 employees, the Hahns simply want to continue working and providing employee health insurance according to their Christian Mennonite faith.
What are they suing over?
The Hahns and the Greens are at the Supreme Court fighting for the freedom to continue living out their faith in how they run their business. They simply want to go on providing their employees with generous health-care plans without being forced to provide coverage of drugs and devices that can end the life of a human embryo.
The families brought claims under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The law, passed by large bipartisan majorities in 1993, prohibits imposing substantial government burdens on religious exercise unless the government can show it has a compelling interest and does so through the least restrictive means possible. That’s a pretty high bar, and one the government has failed to meet in enforcing the HHS mandate.
What happens if Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood don’t comply with the mandate?
The Greens’ and the Hahns’ businesses could face devastating fines — to the tune of up to $100 per employee per day (which adds up to many millions of dollars a year) — for continuing to provide health insurance that doesn’t include life-ending drugs and devices. If they drop their health plans altogether to avoid the mandate, they’ll still face fines of $2,000 per employee per year under Obamacare.
Aren’t there already religious protections in this mandate?
The religious exemption included in the HHS mandate is one of the narrowest in federal policy. It effectively applies only to formal houses of worship, such as a church or synagogue. After public outcry over the mandate’s coercion of religious organizations, the Obama administration created what it calls an “accommodation” to extend religious-freedom protections. But that so-called compromise applies only to certain religious non-profits and is nothing more than a complicated way of enforcing the mandate against religious charities while pretending not to. Everyone else, including family businesses such as Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, must comply or face crippling fines.
What is the government’s position?
While claiming the mandate is necessary for women’s health, the Obama administration has exempted the health-care plans of tens of millions of women from the HHS mandate — often for merely political or commercial reasons. But the government is unrelenting in enforcing this mandate against a relatively small number of family businesses that simply want to provide health care without being forced to violate their conscience under threat of heavy fines.
Throughout the litigation over the rule, the Obama administration essentially argued that families such as the Greens and the Hahns lost their right to religious freedom when they went into business to provide for themselves, their families, and their employees.
I pray this bravado shows with HL is the same kind of bravado Goliath faced when meeting David.
HL - take the SOB down for the count.
And remember one thing folks ( despite what the liberal blowhards will want to tell you ) — THIS CASE IS NOT ABOUT TAKING AWAY ANYONE’s BIRTH CONTROL..
All women, including those who work for Hobby Lobby, remain free to make their own decisions about these drugs and devices — and to purchase or find insurance coverage for them.
Hobby Lobby simply ask that the government not force them to participate in those decisions.
The issue in the case is quite fundamental:
Should the government pick and choose who gets to live out their faith?
I hope he loses all of it....Mandated in an insurance policy for NO ONE.....Buy your own damn pills or go to PP.
I don’t think we can rely on judges to overturn bad legislation.
The voters elected this crap. Only the voters can undo it IMHO.
I only shop Hobby Lobby for the art supplies I use - the store is less than a mile from my home. We have freedom or we don’t - that is what is at stake. Obama is a vengeful anti-Christian swine.
The referenced article sidesteps the major constitutional problem that, regardless what activist justices want everybody to think about the constitutionally of constitutionality indefensible Obamacare Democratcare, the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for public healthcare purposes. This is evidenced by the following excerpt from a case opinion which has been referenced in related FR threads.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. (emphases added)” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
If the states want Congress to regulate, tax and spend for public healthcare purposes, then the states have to amend the Constitution to expressly grant Congress the specific power to do so.
After Hobby Lobby wins this case, they will be subjected to full-court-press liberal bullying:
- boycotts
- MSM ‘investigations’ into every aspect of the Green family
- picketing in front of their stores by the SEIU
- allegations of racism
- ridicule by the Daily Show and the Colbert Report
You know, the usual drill when liberals don’t get their way.
contraceptives should be provided to the retailer free of charge. The manufacturer should bill the federal government and the consumer could get them free.