Alito purports to base his decision on the appallingly named Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in the early 1990s and signed, in a typical burst of conciliatory moderation, by Bill Clinton. That Act apparently was a response to a Supreme Court case, Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, in which certain Amerian Indians were both dismissed from their jobs and denied unemployment benefits for using peyote, an illegal drug, as part of their religious practice. Here are the key passages of this act.
(a)
In general
Government shall not substantially burden a
person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of
general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b) of this
section.
(b)
Exception
Government may substantially burden a
person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application
of the burden to the person—
(c)
Judicial relief
A person whose religious exercise has been
burdened in violation of this section may assert that violation as a
claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief
against a government. Standing to assert a claim or defense under this
section shall be governed by the general rules of standing under article
III of the Constitution.
The act further defines "religious exercise" as follows:
(7)
Religious exercise
(A)
In general
The term “religious exercise” includes
any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a
system of religious belief.
(B)
Rule
The use, building, or conversion of
real property for the purpose of religious exercise shall be considered
to be religious exercise of the person or entity that uses or intends to
use the property for that purpose.
Now I have no objections of either of these passages as written, except to say that I do not think we needed them, since they really do no more than to elaborate on the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution. But that is because I regard an "exercise of religion" as something that an individual, family, or congregation, do, or refuse to do, themselves, because of their personal beliefs. They should not therefore be compelled to eat food that their religion prohibits, or open a store on what they regard as a sacred holy day, or denounce part of their church doctrine. Jehovah's witnesses have been allowed by the Supreme Court to refuse to salute the American flag in school based upon their beliefs. Young men have been exempted from military service because their religious training made them oppose all wars. To be sure, federal courts have ruled against parents who tried to deny their children essential medical treatment based upon their religious beliefs, but those are extreme situations which the new law also recognizes.
Yet the Hobby Lobby claim--and this, for me, is the key point--has nothing to do with the plaintiffs' exercise of their own religion. They do not believe in abortion or certain forms of birth control, which is their perfect right, but the government is not trying to force them to have abortions or have IUDs implanted. Instead, the government has required them (and other comparable businesses) to make health insurance available, and to include full contraceptive coverage (although not coverage for surgical abortions) in the plans they offer. What Hobby Lobby wanted to do was to make it harder for its employees to do anything in opposition to Hobby Lobby's own beliefs. That, in my opinion, is not the "free exercise of religion." It is the opposite: an attempt to impose their religious beliefs on others. And if that isn't unconstitutional under the First Amendment and a violation of all American traditions, then I don't know what is.
Yet astonishingly, Justice Alito, in his opinion, does not even provide any reasoning for endorsing this claim, but simply assumes its validity. Here is the key passage (the opinions may be read here:)
"In these cases, the owners of three closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point. In separate actions,they sued HHS and other federal officials and agencies (collectively HHS) under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause, seeking to enjoin application of the contraceptive mandate insofar as it requires them to provide health coverage for the four objectionable contraceptives." The court, Alito continues, has to decide "whether the challenged HHS regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do. The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients. If the owners comply with the HHS mandate, they believe theywill be facilitating abortions, and if they do not comply,they will pay a very heavy price—as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies. If these consequences do not amount toa substantial burden, it is hard to see what would."
Thus, Alito and his four colleagues are arguing that no one can be compelled to cooperate in the administration of federal legislation whose effect is somehow contrary to their religious beliefs. In exactly the same way, Quakers could easily claim exemption from all taxes collected to pay for wars, Jews and Muslims could object to any federal money spent to facilitate the manufacture, inspection and distribution of food products made from pork, and so on. Every American becomes the rightful judge of what laws he shall observe, based upon his religious belief. Yet the whole point of the United States, child of the Enlightenment that it was, was to form a government based on reason, not religion. Alito and his brethren had imposed a scandalous revision of fundamental Constitutional law, and Providence alone knows where it wll end.
I had written the above paragraphs before I checked Justice Ginsburg's dissent, and to my great joy, she went right to the heart of this matter in her first two paragraphs. To my knowledge, however, the media has failed to pay much attention to what she said.
"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along withpartnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible withtheir sincerely held religious beliefs. See ante, at 16–49. Compelling governmental interests in uniform compliance with the law, and disadvantages that religion-based optouts impose on others, hold no sway, the Court decides, at least when there is a “less restrictive alternative.” And such an alternative, the Court suggests, there always willbe whenever, in lieu of tolling an enterprise claiming a religion-based exemption, the government, i.e., the general public, can pick up the tab. See ante, at 41–43.1
"The Court does not pretend that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause demands religion-based accommodations so extreme, for our decisions leave no doubt on that score. See infra, at 6–8. Instead, the Court holds that Congress, in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq., dictated the extraordinary religion-based exemptions today’s decision endorses. In the Court’s view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners’ religious faith—in these cases, thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga or dependents of persons those corporations employ. Persuaded that Congress enacted RFRA to serve a far less radical purpose, and mindful of the havoc the Court’s judgment can introduce, I dissent."
That is not all. Justice Ginsburg then lays out the legislative history of the ACA with respect to the issue at hand. The initial bill did not require that contraceptive services be covered, but Senator Barbara Mikulski introduced an amendment to do so, and it passed. As Justice Ginsburg initially noted, the court majority claimed a statutory, not a constitutional, basis for siding with Hobby Lobby. But it turns out that the Republicans tried to write Hobby Lobby's position into the law during the debate on the ACA--and Congress rejected their position.
"While the Women’s Health Amendment succeeded, a countermove proved unavailing. The Senate voted down the so-called “conscience amendment,” which would have enabled any employer or insurance provider to deny coverage based on its asserted “religious beliefs or moralconvictions.” 158 Cong. Rec. S539 (Feb. 9, 2012); see id., at S1162–S1173 (Mar. 1, 2012) (debate and vote).6 That amendment, Senator Mikulski observed, would have “pu[t] the personal opinion of employers and insurers over the practice of medicine.” Id., at S1127 (Feb. 29, 2012). Rejecting the “conscience amendment,” Congress left healthcare decisions—including the choice among contraceptive methods—in the hands of women, with the aid of their health care providers."
Ginsburg also makes clear from the legislative history that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was designed merely to overturn the Smith decision, and not to create new, additional rights related to the exercise of religion. Alito's reasoning relied on the opposite assertion.
Justice Ginsburg's also dismisses the majority's incredible claim that since corporations have in some contexts been characterized as "persons," they can also be accorded the right to exercise religion.
"Until this litigation, no decision of this Court recognizeda for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious exemption from a generally applicable law, whether underthe Free Exercise Clause or RFRA.13 The absence of such precedent is just what one would expect, for the exercise ofreligion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities. As Chief Justice Marshall observed nearlytwo centuries ago, a corporation is “an artificial being,invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819). Corporations, Justice Stevens more recently reminded, “have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.” Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 U. S. 310, 466 (2010) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part)."
Justice Ginsburg also shows at length that the majority's grant of religious rights to for-profit corporations is not only unprecedented, but flies in the face of distinctions between for-profit and religious corporations that have been made in Anglo-American law for centuries.
It seems to me clear that the Republican majority on the court, which has been carefully put together and nurtured for decades by a network of sitting justices (whose clerks often go on to great things), the Federalist Society, and right-wing think tanks, are engaged in an ongoing campaign of judicial activism designed to undo much of the law and governing philosophy of the last century. Chief Justice Roberts is among other things a clever politician, and he knows enough not to go too far too fast, as he showed when he declined on very narrow grounds to declare the Affordable Care 3unconstitutional, while denying Justice Ginsburg's overwhelming arguments that it passed muster on all counts. Yet the long-term trend is clear. It can be compared, it seems to me, to two other periods in the court's life. In the decades from the 1880s through the 1920s, when the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled against both federal and state power to regulate the economy in many ways, denied the rights of organized labor, allowed racial segregation, and declared a federal income tax unconstitutional. In the years 1934-6 the Court struck down a number of important New Deal laws, including the National Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Guffey-Snyder Coal Act, which sought to regulate wages and hours in the coal industry. In 1937, however, after Roosevelt introduced legislation to increase its size, the Court majority shifted its course and let stand both the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act.
Of the two eras, sad to say, the Gilded Age looks much more similar to this one than the New Deal era. The Nine Old Men, as Drew Pearson and Robert Allen named them, were fighting a rear-guard action against progress. They were relics of a distant age. The Gilded Age judges, led by Chief Justice Fuller, were still "in the full force of life," as the French say, and confidently pushed free market ideas forward for a long time. The current court majority includes two members of the Silent generation, Judges Scalia and Kennedy (who has become more conservative of late), and three Boomers, two of whom are only in late middle age. If a Republican President gets to make the next Supreme Court appointment, their views will dominate for another ten years at least.
The greater ruthlessness of Republicans, who want to return us to the Gilded Age, than Democrats, who are meek defenders of parts of the inherited status quo, is one of the main reasons for the victories they have won for their policy agenda. The Republicans began their ascendancy, after all, by stealing the presidential election of 2000, and they continue to use every advantage they can find both to block Democratic agendas and to advance their own. This decision is another such step forward for them, and to the extent that it does indeed create chaos in the administration of federal laws, it will help them still further. The battle for the future of the US is still going on.
6 comments:
To Michael: The Democratic Party believes in a right to abortion, as declared by the Supreme court in 1973. While I personally feel that decision was a mistake and that abortion rights would be on firmer ground in most of the US today if it had never been handed down, that decision remains the law.
I must say, however, that Judge Ginsburg's dissent and the controversy over Hobby Lobby and the ACA have nothing to do with wanting to facilitate abortions. They are about wanting to facilitate contraception, which is an alternative to abortion. Denying women access to contraception will result in more abortions, not less.
As we see by the first comment some issues are more important to people of religious belief than others and can bring them to a point where the basic constitutional order is less important than their religious sentiment. Basic reproductive rights / female-male relationships /sexual relationships fall under this rubric. Just look at Turkey where Erdogan is very very popular with half of the population who are religious conservative and whose women wear headscarves and this regardless of his obvious corruption. Their basic values are at stake. For example a "liberal" values freedom of speech and thought and the conservatives value the family and religion and maybe spirituality. If for example one believes that all politicians are corrupt or corruptible then what is the point of democracy? One retreats to one's own family circle and congregation and controls one's own personal circle. After death one will have own's own reward, etc. this is the sort of attitude one may have seen at the fall of Rome. People were impoverished due to corruption, gave up on the system and dealt with their own problems as best they could.
If the conservatives in govt. in America have decided that their values stand above the constitution as it was meant by the Founding Fathers then they will twist it as far as they can to destroy liberalism and go back to something which in their eyes is more stable, namely personal conscience or religious sentiment. Science and liberalism is seen as corroding morality, family, basic values which are much deeper and older than those of the Founding Fathers. They want perhaps a return to simpler days of the 1950s where everything was mom-apple pie, no drugs, everyone was married, little divorce,etc. This ruling seems like an opt-out like secessionism at the corporate, business level. Suppose Wal-Mart ownership or GM shareholder majority were to decide on a code of religious observation corresponding to the company mentioned in the court decision. What use would congressional laws be when such large entities can opt out and perhaps just to cynically save money? The question is whether this balkanizes, i.e. weakens and fragments America, or whether it forces a rethink of modern values since the enlightenment coming to a more fundamental reassessment of what we are about.
The concept of progress is the fundamental value at stake here. Personal freedom as a value in itself leads to leads to atomization and alienation and disintegration of community. Economic growth as the measurement of societal and personal well-being is misleading.
From the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
The judges are obviously trying to balance between whose Life, whose Liberty and whose pursuit of Happiness is most important.
Maybe they consider that the State as such should retreat, that it controls too much of life of people with endless regulations and taxation. Perhaps this is freedom of the individual and corporate "individuals" against the state intrusion into moral community and conscience at a fundamental level.
(a bit more)
I recall my wife's story of her aunt who ca. early 60s (19 years old or so) died of a botched illegal abortion her mother had forced her into, this was in Russia. Values were in 1970s radically different where every 2nd pregnancy ended in abortion there, the chosen method of contraception. How fast morality changes and why? Generational consciousness perhaps in all European type countries was different. Religion was important to the older generation. Shame of what people would say, the local "slut" having a "bastard" as a disgrace to the whole family. Nowadays it is a normal affair that women rear children alone. Morality and religion have disappeared in general from the picture(e.g. fundametalist Sarah Palin's daughter pregnant with illegitimate child).
The concept of progress is the fundamental value at stake here. Personal freedom as a value in itself leads to leads to atomization and alienation and disintegration of community. Economic growth as the measurement of societal and personal well-being is misleading. Technology allows people to live "independently". Supermarkets, microwaves, prepared and canned foods, washing machines take away lots of hard work in the household and generally the moral obligation that goes with all that work and the duties and responsibilities of holding a family together. In point of fact if we had robots which could do everything for us, do the shopping, refill the fridge, wash up, clean the house, etc. then a child could live alone as an independent individual without parents and just with "robot help" after 10 years old and maybe younger. We would be much more willing to divorce, never marry, whatever. The state would pay for the robots and kids would get by without us. This would be called progress. Some people find pain and hard work as a sort of spiritual progress. For instance you have accomplished much in your literary career. In another century it would have been impossible and unimportant to you anyway as not valued. Who would read all those books anyway? What is literacy?
TV reduced the value of thinking that came with literacy. Common vocabulary is falling back to the level of that a farmer had a couple of centuries ago and the level of rational intelligence as well whereas craftsmanship, the intellectual activity of earlier ages has also been lost. People are becoming mentally stupid and physically incompetent due to technology and our entire societal and moral character and sense of community has been lost to the basic product of progress, technology, as I listed above(household automation enabling liberation of women). This is like WALL.E Pixar film. The earth is also being destroyed and our egos will never be fulfilled by doing that or getting more stuff. The Pursuit of Happiness is achieved in the small things that come with hard work and are difficult to achieve, like holding a family together and raising kids who don't go wrong.
The US constitution is a fundamental touchstone of the enlightenment age and what happens with it and its interpretation as with America as an experiment of this particular age is indicative of the mood of modern man and whether or not we can survive in the direction we have set ourselves off onto.
Michael,I cannot believe that increased use of contraceptives leads to more abortions. It is a fact that since 1973, contraception, abortion, and unmarried sex have been increasing, yes. All of them. But contraception stops pregnancy, thus making abortion unnecessary. That is obvious.
Now while I think abortion should be legal, I also think that there is very little excuse for anyone (male or female) to help create an unwanted pregnancy in today's world. When I was raising children I told them that risking unwanted pregnancy was one of two unforgivable sins (the other being drunk driving.) That's what I thought and what I think now, and birth control is sufficiently available to have it.
Lastly, there are plenty of women who want to use contraception so that they can have sex without fear of unwanted pregnancy. This is not simply something forced upon them by men.
As it happens, Michael, probably the safest and easiest method to use is the IUD, which is what Hobby Lobby is refusing to have anything to do with.
I think you are passing along anti-contraception propaganda without basis in real fact.
Good Morning:
Really fascinating stuff. Thank you all for this thought-provoking dialogue.
But let's get back to some real issues here. As David says, most of us would rather see people use contraceptives so as to not have to deal with the birth/abortion issue. But aside from that you have to look at what is really happening here, not just interesting wishes.
Stay with me here and think this through.
Republicans in general want unwanted babies to be born. Affluent mothers never have to have them, legal or illegal. So these people's desire is just for unwanted babies. After they are born, most republicans will vote to prevent sufficient food. They will also vote for a lack of medical care. In some circumstances they can make sure of inadequate education.
Now what do you have? Seriously, think this through. Republicans want lots of unwanted babies who have inadequate food, inadequate medical care and hopefully an inadequate education.
This does go somewhere but you have to think it through.
See?
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