Posted on 09/23/2013 6:42:43 AM PDT by Zakeet
If you began last Friday by scanning the web for interesting news items, you were hit by a tsunami of stories suggesting that the Obama administration wishes the Supreme Court to intervene in its legal battle with Hobby Lobby over that company’s refusal to comply with the HHS contraception mandate. Most of the major “news” outlets began their coverage with a rented AP report titled, “US Wants Supreme Court to Take Up Hobby Lobby Case,” and followed up with tendentious opinion pieces insinuating that the administration took this step to thwart a dark plot by Hobby Lobby to deny its employees birth control coverage.
In reality, the Obama administration “wants” the Supreme Court involved in this case just about as much as you want a root canal. It was forced to file an appeal with the high court because, last June, Hobby Lobby dealt the government’s lawyers a resounding defeat in a federal appeals court. To understand how, one must first understand what this lawsuit is really about. It does not concern, as the Los Angeles Times suggests, whether a corporation can have religious beliefs. The case isn’t even about contraception — Hobby Lobby’s employee insurance plans cover birth control. Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius is about religious liberty.
The First Amendment of the Constitution begins thus: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The Hobby Lobby case has arrived on the steps of the Supreme Court because the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the company’s owners that the HHS contraception mandate restricts the free exercise of their religion. Rejecting the administration’s arguments to the contrary, the majority wrote, “[W]e cannot see why an individual operating for-profit retains Free Exercise protections but an individual who incorporates… does not.”
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
The Supreme Court isn’t as ignorant as the alleged reporters who have published so much misinformation about the Hobby Lobby case, but they nonetheless reach some bizarre decisions. If John Roberts can transform Obamacare’s individual mandate into a tax, he can convert David Green and his family into second-class citizens who don’t enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. And, for better or worse, he and his fellow justices get the last word.
He would not be going for SC intervention if he didn’t know what the response would be.
"I made this video to show teens how much
fun it is having late-term suction abortions."
The Judiciary, as an independent branch, is insulated from the executive and legislative. They act in secrecy. Other than 0's few inside informants that have no problem whatsoever providing info, not recusing when they should, etc.
You mean those two Progressive Party plants, Kagan and Sotomeyer, who will ALWAYS vote on Party-Line Dem interests, to further The Agenda?
Yes, the usual suspects.
However, this Hobby Lobby case highlights that this POS legislation is not only incredibly unfair and prejudicial in its highly selective implementation (you can't legally do that with a "tax"), it is also a complete trampling of the religious freedom rights of 'We The People'. This new case will be the "Do-Over" for Chief Justice Roberts to properly rule that the HHS Mandate violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment as well as a federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
FURTHERMORE, since it is likely that the SCOTUS will decide to take this case in the next 30 days, 0bamacare should be DEFUNDED pending such resolution by SCOTUS next year.
A ping for your well-considered thoughts on this topic.
Non on topic, but motivated by the Kenyan massacre: At some point, we're going to have to decide if Islam is really a religion for the purposes of the First Amendment.
The administration’s war on Christianity continues. Even if Hobby Lobby prevails this won’t be the end of it.
On the one hand the danger of people concocting a religion to avoid the application of law is obvious. On the other hand if we permit people to opt out of a constitutional law by permitting a religious group to scruple over a law, we have then to permit the courts to decide as a matter of law what a religion is or is not and what observance a religion is or is not entitled to have protected. This is a very dangerous path.
However, it is a path we go down when we decide whether someone is a legitimate conscientious objector in time of war, for example, so it is not something entirely beyond the canon of our justice system.
My bias in this case, of course, is to favor the religious liberty of the company involved but we have to be careful not to let hard cases make bad law. Certainly we have bad law, Obamacare, making more and more bad law as the court twists and perverts the Constitution to declare it a tax or, for some Justices, perfectly acceptable exercise of regulation under the commerce clause. In other words, when you start to go down a road created by a bad law it just gets worse and worse. There is no reason why we should be confronted with this dilemma. The real constitutional crime here is Obamacare itself.
Is there a “Toe-nail fungus free” version of this information?
Thanks much, ad
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