Democrats File Bill to “Overturn” Supreme Court Decision Protecting Hobby Lobby

As promised, Senate Democrats filed legislation today to “overturn” the Supreme Court’s decision protecting Hobby Lobby and other companies from being forced to comply with the HHS mandate that compels them to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

The court ruled that the contraception mandate violated the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, a 1993 law and it held that the mandate “substantially burdens the exercise of religion” and that HHS didn’t use the “least restrictive means” to promote this government interest, tests required by RFRA.

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.” The opinion said the “plain terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act” are “perfectly clear.”

Now, Senate Democrats want to change the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in a way that would force companies to pay for birth control, contraception and those abortion-causing drugs.

Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), both abortion advocates, are behind the new legislation and they said, “The Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act would ban employers from refusing to provide health coverage — including contraceptive coverage — guaranteed to their employees and dependents under federal law.”

“After five justices decided last week that an employer’s personal views can interfere with women’s access to essential health services, we in Congress need to act quickly to right this wrong,” Murray said. “This bicameral legislation will ensure that no CEO or corporation can come between people and their guaranteed access to health care, period. I hope Republicans will join us to revoke this court-issued license to discriminate and return the right of Americans to make their own decisions, about their own health care and their own bodies.”

Not one Senate Republican has signed on to the legislation, which pro-life groups will undoubtedly strenuously oppose. House Republicans will not take up the bill, making it so the legislation will not reach President Barack Obama, an abortion advocate who would sign it into law.

In their ruling, the Supreme Court indicated Congress could change the law to require businesses to pay for the birth control and abortion drugs.

“There are other ways in which Congress or HHS could equally ensure that every woman has cost-free access to the particular contraceptives at issue here and, indeed, to all FDA-approved contraceptives,” the opinion concluded.

“The plain terms of RFRA make it perfectly clear that Congress did not discriminate in this way against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs,” read the opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy joined in the majority decision. Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans agree with the Supreme Court’s decision this week that the Christian-run Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to obey the HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare that requires businesses to pay for abortion causing drugs in their employee health care plans.

“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,” the poling firm reports about its new national survey.

“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.

The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38% of Likely U.S. Voters still believe 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.

Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.”

Nope, you add an Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court could not rule on squat against that since that new amendment is now part of the Constitution and the supreme law of the land (In theory, we are waaayyyy past adhering to the original intent of our Republic though).

13th Amendment overrode the precedent set in the Dred Scott decision along with several other Amendments which "took care" (Some for the worst like the 16th Amendment) of some Supreme Court decisions.

Still, the only way that anything Congress does - even amending the Constitution - qualifies as a “Reveral” of a prior Supreme Court interpretation of existing law, is if Congress changes HOW such interpretations can be reversed.

So even if Congress wrote an amendment that, for example, made employer-paid contraception a new “right”, then even though such an amendment would then supersede a law like the RFRA, it would not effectively be a reversal or the court’s interpretation of the RFRA at the time the ruling was made. Rather, the court would then have to make a new ruling, not based on the RFRA, but based on the amendment which would then take precedence.

However, that while that would be a different case, with a different result, based on a different law (the new amendment), it would still not be a reversal, just a new ruling.

Under the Constitution, a “reversal” only occurs when a new SCOTUS re-interprets the same law differently than an prior SCOTUS, and then makes a ruling that completely changes what the prior court had decided. So unless you change the part of the Constitution that describes how this gets done, than anything else you do to any federal law, including the Constitution, is not a reversal, but rather an accommodation that is made in deference to what the court had ruled, in order to get the result you want.

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