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axeil posted:If SCOTUS rules in favor of Hobby Lobby in the Hobby Lobby case, wouldn't that open up all kinds of problems with employers dictating what their employees can and cannot use their compensation for? I'd expect a very narrow ruling from them or telling Hobby Lobby to get hosed but this court has, with the exception of the ACA ruling, proved to not give a drat what the consequences of their major rulings are. No, because "you can't use your compensation for this" is not an accurate description of Hobby Lobby's actions. Employees are still allowed to buy birth control, and if they have a health savings account they are still allowed to spend that money on birth control. What would happen in that a small number of "non-religious" employers would choose to not cover birth control on their company plans.
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Dec 3, 2013 17:43
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VitalSigns posted:So since Hobby Lobby didn't drop contraceptive coverage from their plans until after the ACA mandate, can we discount their actions as indicating partisan spite against the law rather than a sincerely held belief? I've never heard this. Do you have a source that supports your claim that they offered contraceptive coverage before the ACA mandate?
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Dec 3, 2013 17:55
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axeil posted:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/27/obamacare-contraception-supreme-court-religious-freedom A source that isn't an op-ed, which often get facts wrong. This is an extremely relevant fact and I would expect it to be mentioned in the court opinions. My understanding is that they added it to the plan to comply with the mandate and sued to get it removed.
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Dec 3, 2013 18:11
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Shifty Pony posted:Isn't the real potential impact of the case (besides for the obvious BC issue) going to be to what extent an incorporated business is actually separate from the people running it? I mean if at a certain point and under certain ownership arrangements a company is so fundamentally the same as its owners such that it takes on their religion, would the inverse not be true? You could end up with a really really nasty mess with regard to corporate veil piercing for criminal or civil liability. Well yes, it is an important case and it will have a big impact on that sort of thing, though I don't think it will completely undermine the concept of corporations as you are implying. What definitely won't happen is CEOs saying "well I'm an Amish convert now so we won't cover MRIs". It takes an autistic view of the law to think anything like that would occur. It's akin to saying "if they let indians smoke peyote then I'll just say my religion requires that I take heroin" and just as ridiculous. It would only really directly affect birth control because the other major procedures that companies would likely object to, like abortions or viagra, are not mandated.
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Dec 3, 2013 20:11
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ToastyPotato posted:I guess I am having trouble understanding the Hobby Lobby thing. What is covered under the benefit plans that employers provide to their employees is determined by the employer (or is collectively bargained). Employers have a wide leeway to choose to cover or not cover things like abortion, viagra, etc. Hobby Lobby is saying that the law violates their religious rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it is forcing them to do something that they have religious qualms about. Any money that Hobby Lobby gives to employees is still allowed to be used to pay for contraception, Hobby Lobby has no control over that. They do have control over what the plan covers. It's only partially relevant to the case, but since Hobby Lobby has a self-insured insurance arrangement: yes, when an employee gets contraception Hobby Lobby specifically pays for it. Amarkov posted:The PPACA establishes that a protected class of religious employers do not have to "give [their] money to an insurance company (on behalf of [their] employees) that may then use said money to pay for contraception that goes against [their] religious beliefs". I agree with you that this is a silly provision, but it exists. The question is whether or not Hobby Lobby has the right to be classified as a religious employer. AFAIK they aren't claiming that they qualify as a religious employer under the PPACA exemption, they are making claims under the RFRA. esquilax fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 20:46
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StarMagician posted:Wouldn't they just rule that you can't be required to pay for political activity, but you can be required to pay for bargaining activities (as is the case in non-Right to Work states)? The main complicating factor is that they aren't really employees of the state and therefore the requirements are more like political petitioning than like collectively bargaining. They get paid by the government via the medicaid program, but they aren't public employees by the usual definition and were actually ruled as NOT public employees by the Illinois Labor Relations Board. Or, at least, they weren't classified as public employees until an executive order was issued in 2003 saying they would be counted as such. Let's assume for a second that they aren't public employees (as was the case until the executive order). Forcing them to pay a group to petition the government on their behalf may be unconstitutional. Then, in 2003, the governor issues an executive order saying that personal assistants DO count as public employees for the purposes of labor relations, but for no other purposes at all. Suddenly a previously unconstitutional set of facts becomes constitutional simply by reclassifying personal assistants as public employees. If you accept that what they are forcing the personal assistants to do counts as collectively bargaining then it's pretty cut and dry. If you don't then it's at least an interesting case.
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Jan 21, 2014 04:42
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Stereotype posted:Sorry for not understanding, but is the major debate of this case whether or not people can be legally compelled to pay union dues? So if this case finds that such mandatory dues are unconstitutional, it simply allows people to opt out of union dues while keeping their job? I also take it that the mandatory union dues were written into all default new hire contracts in some round of negotiations between labor and management, and now may be stripped out without renegotiation? It's about mandatory union dues in the public sector only, and potentially only for a subset of public sector workers.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:20
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mcmagic posted:This is Scalia from the Smith case dealing with right of Native American people to smoke Peyote as part of their religion: Considering that Congress passed the Religious freedom restoration act in reaction to the decision in Smith, and that it violates the RFRA is the main basis of Hobby Lobby's argument, probably not too many knots.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:02
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mcmagic posted:My religion says I can't pay more than in 10% in taxes. What now Scalia? Because using fairytales to dictate public policy is hilarious. The RFRA only grants exceptions if the law is not the least restrictive means of serving a government interest. Things like taxes are almost certainly going to pass that, whereas Hobby Lobby at least has a plausible argument that the birth control mandate does not.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:07
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mcmagic posted:It can't be just a government interest can it? I mean if my religion calls for me to walk up to random people on the street and punch them in the face every other Thursday, those people's right to not be punched in the face is competing with my religious freedom and their right would win in court I assume... "Preventing people from getting punched in the face" is a compelling government interest so no one is exempt from the requirement that you not punch people in the face. Hobby Lobby is arguing that mandating birth control does not serve a compelling government interest for reasons x, y, and z, which means they should be exempt from that requirement.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:16
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falcon2424 posted:What bugs me about the case is that I think there's a sane argument for corporations being able to get some kind of religious exemptions. They decided a very similar case in Braunfeld v Brown. The court ended up saying that the restriction was okay because there was an overriding government interest. The really important thing for Hobby Lobby's argument is that closing the store on Saturday was a protected exercise of religion - just because it was commercial activity conducted for-profit does not mean that it automatically became non-religious. The important thing to note for everyone else is that whether or not it is a protected exercise of religion can be easily overridden.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:38
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Kro-Bar posted:Will the fact that Hobby Lobby's religious argument is based on faulty science (specifically the assertion that Plan B and IUDs are abortifacients) play into SCOTUS's decision at all? The appeal court decision addressed this: quote:There is an ongoing medical debate as to whether some of the contraceptive methods relevant to this case act by preventing implantation or fertilization. Compare, e.g., Physicians for Reproductive Health et al. Amicus Br. at 12–13, with rear end’n of Am. Physicians & Surgeons et al. Amicus Br. at 12 & n.21. This is relevant because Hobby Lobby and Mardel object to forms of contraception that prevent uterine implantation, but they do not object to those that prevent conception. For purposes of this appeal, however, there is no material dispute. Both the government and the medical amici supporting the government concede that at least some of the contraceptive methods to which the plaintiffs object have the potential to prevent uterine implantation... Whatever the merits of this argument, we need not wade into scientific waters here, given the above-noted agreement that some of the challenged devices function in a manner that Hobby Lobby and Mardel find morally problematic.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:58
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FlamingLiberal posted:Has anyone mentioned that pre-ACA Hobby Lobby had no problem covering birth control? You need a source for this, the lower court decisions never mention it. They did and still do cover birth control, but have issue with some forms that to my knowledge were never covered.
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Mar 26, 2014 15:26
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VitalSigns posted:Sotomayor mentioned it briefly in the arguments as a "take that!" and she also pointed out that they could have grandfathered in their plan if they hadn't excluded more contraceptives. Can you provide a quote? This is inconsistent with other sources I've seen. e.g from Salon, a source that would obviously be opposed to Hobby Lobby's case http://www.salon.com/2014/03/25/4_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_hobby_lobby_scotus_case/ quote:Hobby Lobby already covered 16 of the 20 methods of contraception mandated under the Affordable Care Act, but it didn’t cover Plan B One-Step, Ella (another brand of emergency contraception) and two forms of intrauterine devices. And it is those drugs specifically that the case is about. Nothing I've seen shows that they've pulled an about-face or "changed their tune" on the topic. This phrasing implies that their religious actions in this case are not sincere, which should (and probably would) have a major bearing on the case.
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Mar 26, 2014 16:19
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VitalSigns posted:I'm on my phone or I would but it's at the bottom of page 31 of the transcript where Sotomayor says that. While you're not misinterpreting her remarks, I don't think they relevant in the context of that discussion, or are indicative of the sort of dishonesty as FlamingLiberal is implying. Hobby Lobby lost grandfathered status before the contraceptive requirement was even proposed, so Sotomayor's comment there is more of a jab than a relevant comment. Something new that I did learn from Hobby Lobby's brief is that Plan B and Ella were actually covered at one point - when Hobby Lobby discovered this they immediately removed coverage from the plan (which was before the mandate was proposed, and so the removal was not motivated by the mandate). Nothing that happened should lead us to doubt the sincerity of their case, as people have implied. When the mandate was proposed by HHS and the suit began, Hobby Lobby's plan was already not covering those drugs and was not grandfathered - hence most news sources saying they didn't cover them.
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Mar 26, 2014 17:51
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VitalSigns posted:Oh I agree that it shouldn't have any bearing on the case, and it was just a jab on Sotomayor's part. I'm sure there is some universe where it's possible that the Greens are passionately concerned about the all-importance of saving the lives of precious little babies, but for some reason it didn't warrant the effort to actually read through their health plan. Sure they could believe that the peril of abortion is so great that they must deny women not only methods proven to cause abortion, but also methods that have no evidence they cause abortions as long as it hasn't been definitively proven that it's undeniably impossible for them to ever cause an abortion. The risk is just too great...just not great enough to be worth reading the documents you sign apparently. And it's entirely possible that they just so happened to notice this when people were combing through everything they could to find an excuse to cry persecution and wedge their religion into exemptions from public policy. It's also entirely possible that the Arizona bill was really about suddenly protecting black bakers from having to cater KKK rallies too and had nothing to do with the coincidental timing of gay marriages becoming legal in more and more of the country too. There should absolutely be a sincerity test! However they essentially automatically pass that test because the government has conceded the sincerity of Hobby Lobby in this case. They didn't question it because the examples that you're bringing up don't show what you think they show.
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Mar 26, 2014 19:15
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Unzip and Attack posted:Can someone explain/outline for me how corporate health coverage for employees works in terms of how it financially benefits the company? I thought compensation given to employees in the form of healthcare counted as a tax write off - is that not the case? Also do companies face a fine if they don't offer insurance as a part of their compensation? Health care costs and wages are the same to the company - both are tax deductible. The tax advantages come because the benefit of the health insurance is not taxable to the employee. It costs the employer the same to give the employee a $10,000 health plan or a $10,000 bump in salary, but the $10,000 bump in salary would only provide ~$5,000 or $6,000 of benefit to the employee because they have to pay taxes on it. Starting in 2015, companies face a fine if they don't provide health insurance - it's about $2,000 per employee but NOT tax deductible - so the actual company impact is closer to $3,000 per employee. If Hobby Lobby wanted to "make their employees whole" by bumping their salary, it might end up costing them more than they currently spend and it might cost less - there's no real way to know unless you do a pretty in-depth analysis. In general, it costs a lot of money to drop the health plan and make employees whole, and even then you have winners and losers - typically older employees will lose out because their health care plans are more expensive. Other numbers if people were interested - covering the 4 controversial contraceptives costs them $26M per year, and the penalties for not complying cost $475M per year. esquilax fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 17:36
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Probably also benefits the employer, because they're not paying their share of taxes on it either, I don't think? I was looking at it from an economic standpoint, but I guess you're technically right. They don't have to pay their share of SS or medicare taxes on health insurance, but they would have to pay them on income.
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Mar 27, 2014 19:11
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Radish posted:It sounds like the government has conceded that there is a minuscule chance that the morning after pill could cause a situation where an egg that had dropped before taking the pill met with a sperm and was impregnated, and then failed to attach to the uterine wall due to hormonal issues. They consider that an abortion and thus I can see their logic that that way being valid although it doesn't sound like they looked very hard at other drugs that can cause similar issues. I think the more important issue is that as a corporation that shields its owners from a lot of legal issues they really have no business telling their employees how their compensation for labor should be used so I don't care if it is an abortifacient or not. No issues with the rest of your post but the bolded portion is a poor interpretation that I hear a lot. They can't prevent employees from using "their compensation" on Plan B or any other contraceptive methods, or even an actual abortion. What they are doing is making sure it is not included in the health plan that they offer to the employee. If a company didn't cover Viagra or nose jobs under their health plan, you wouldn't say they are telling their employees how their compensation could be used, would you?
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Mar 27, 2014 19:34
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Implicit in that statement is a moral judgement - if you think that it's morally wrong to exclude ANY medical-related good or service from a health insurance plan then it's perfectly consistent to say that it's wrong to exclude contraception. I think that most people disagree though, and would like to draw a distinction between contraception and nose jobs. Radish posted:I guess that's true, but from what I understand they are trying to get around what the government has determined as the minimum requirements for a company health plan (I am probably phrasing that incorrectly or I may be wrong in which case please correct). Instead of taking the tax hit for refusing they are trying to be entirely except and since the employees are supposed to be getting that as per the government and Hobby Lobby certainly isn't going to give them a pay raise to compensate it feels to me they are having a direct hand in telling them what they should be spending their salaries on. Your phrasing is fine there - they are trying to get around the regulations (because they say the regs violate their religious rights). I take it that from this post that before covering contraceptives became part of the minimum requirements, you think that Hobby Lobby was not telling employees how they should be spending their money? Then after the regulations were released, even though the facts are the exact same, Hobby Lobby is now telling employees how they should be spending their money? If you agree with those and think that the government regulation causes a moral difference, then I think we just have a fundamental disagreement about the moral weight of regulations.
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Mar 27, 2014 20:35
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VitalSigns posted:Yes, I would say that. The same as if they paid their employees in Hobby Lobby gift cards instead of money, which would restrict employees' private purchases to the Jesus-approved offerings of Hobby Lobby stores. That question was in response to: quote:I think the more important issue is that as a corporation that shields its owners from a lot of legal issues they really have no business telling their employees how their compensation for labor should be used I'm fine with conceding either (1) or (2) depending on how we define the phrase, but not both - if giving someone gift card to Bass Pro Shop in addition to their normal pay counts as "telling someone how to use their compensation" then "telling someone how to use their compensation" isn't necessarily wrong. Therefore if we want to decide that excluding contraception from the plan is wrong, it must be wrong for other reasons than by virtue of being "telling someone how to use their compensation". You've posted many of those other reasons. It this post sounds pedantic and overly specific it's because it is. My last few posts were to rebut a specific argument, and most of your post simply adds new arguments.
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Mar 27, 2014 23:53
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VitalSigns posted:If gift cards make up such a large proportion of an employee's salary that they don't have enough left over to afford necessities on their own and have to rely on Bass-Pro-Shop-approved items, then yes it is immoral and exploitative. Scrip and company stores were outlawed for a reason. The immorality consists in the employer using his power to harm the employee. A gift card as a Christmas perk doesn't preclude the employee from buying the things she needs. Paying her largely in gift cards would. I actually agree with you on the cost point - that there is a compelling interest involved and employee interests are an important factor in what should be done in the case. I'm ignoring the cost point because it's not relevant to the discussion I was having, which was about a specific characterization. VitalSigns posted:I'm not arguing this, I don't think Radish was either VitalSigns posted:Edit: I get that you don't think Hobby Lobby should win the case. I'm just explaining that an underlying assumption that you (and many people, including the government's advocate) make is that this is Hobby Lobby's money that they're spending and I counter that it's not, that the employee earned it and it belongs to her, and that the government is not forcing Hobby Lobby to spend its money, but merely setting the legal terms of the minimum employment compensation that she is entitled to receive. I'm sure there's probably case law that supports the view that it's Hobby Lobby's money because the courts are pretty terrible at privileging business over labor, but I think it's still worth talking about. esquilax fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 01:05
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VitalSigns posted:
The mandate requires that they cover it under the plan AND pay the entire cost, so that wouldn't avoid the legal issue.
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Mar 28, 2014 13:06
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McAlister posted:She. I'm not getting it. Are you saying that the discounts (incl rebates) entirely offset the cost of those drugs? Or are you saying that the discounts can be allocated to those drugs specifically so that they are paying $0 in an accounting sense, so that they are only losing out on $26 million in discounts instead of paying $26 million? Or are you saying that the PBM would be taking on the cost burden for the drugs? It probably wouldn't matter to the legal issue, as they more than likely have a religious opposition to it being on the plan at all, regardless of the cost. It also doesn't solve the legal issue because it's not just drugs - IUDs also make their list and I'm 90% sure those are medical devices and would be covered through medical benefits and not a PBM.
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Mar 29, 2014 09:28
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FAUXTON posted:It is pretty unfortunate because Obama could easily argue that the "Davy Crockett" nuclear option of blasting the filibuster on judicial nominees is in the interest of actually maintaining the court system while the "Tsar Bomba" nuclear option the GOP will pull is all about just putting their jackboots on the necks of the American People And Their Legislative Process. He could just two-fist veto stamps and essentially force the GOP to find 60 votes on everything. Doesn't change much, but overriding a veto is actually 67 votes (and 2/3 of the house). 60 votes is just to break a filibuster.
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Apr 3, 2014 18:53
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CheesyDog posted:So, could I now form a SuperPAC that explicitly threatens "if you don't vote this way on this bill we will run $x in political ads against you?" No because that's a quid pro quo arrangement.
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Apr 4, 2014 21:30
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gret posted:They might have better luck with an Asian-American plaintiff that got rejected despite test scores and grades above the median of students accepted at a school that practices affirmative action. They are actually specifically focused on Asian-American students, in the case of Harvard. "Looking for white people" was only The Warszawa's characterization http://www.projectonfairrepresentation.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/POFR-Harvard-UNC-Wisconsin.pdf quote:POFR believes that Harvard University, specifically, is discriminating against Asian-American students by using a “quota” or “ceiling” to limit their admission to the university. esquilax fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 17:11
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Jagchosis posted:There are apparently regulations requiring that fish of a certain species caught be over 20 inches long, and government officials found some fisher with some undersized fish and cited him. In doing so they requested that he keep the fish for an investigation, and he threw some of the fish out and replaced other ones with appropriately sized fish. He was charged with obstructing a federal investigation under 18 U.S.C. § 1519, which comes from Sarbanes-Oxley § 808. The whole thing is pretty dumb. Why is it pretty dumb? It's worded broadly enough that it may apply to fishery law, and the officers instructed Yates to keep the fish as a tangible record that the fish were undersized, and he clearly did so with the intent to obstruct justice. What's the major legal difference between destroying the fish and destroying, say, photographs of the fish next to a ruler or destroying a document listing the lengths of all the fish caught? edit: I mean it's not exactly "three felonies a day" stuff here - he purposefully destroyed the fish in order to escape punishment for something that he knew or (as a fisherman) should have known was illegal esquilax fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 22:37
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Jagchosis posted:I mean, textually he did violate the statute but it does seem like a question of prosecutorial discretion, as Congress was much more focused on document shredding to cover accounting fraud when they wrote this: I'm taking that statement in the opposite way - that the existing laws were very specific with regards to when you could be charged with destruction of evidence, which left a lot of loopholes. So they introduced a broad, general rule against destruction in order to close loopholes in advance. While accounting fraud was definitely on their minds, I think they specifically wrote the law so that it wouldn't only apply to accounting fraud. Obviously the maximum punishment of 20 years is way disproportionate to the crime itself. But I see nothing wrong with a prosecution in this case resulting in a reasonable punishment to tell offenders "if you get caught red handed, don't destroy the evidence"
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Apr 30, 2014 23:41
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Javid posted:The original fish size violation was just a red herring; they (maybe) just wanted to give him an opportunity and motivation to destroy evidence. They have a witness from the boat that said that Yates ordered them to destroy/replace the fish that were in violation. I doubt they left the fish with him like they were a bunch of piranhas. More than likely they were angry that he tried to put one over on them and wanted to knock him off his perch. With all the evidence though, he's really swimming upstream. He's really floundering here. This particular case is getting a lot of press because it's kind of silly, but also because a lot of people don't like it when prosecutors try to cast a wide net in charging.
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May 1, 2014 00:38
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about prosecutors going for people and finding crimes later: If their original citation was enough to prove he kept undersized fish, why did they still need the fish afterwards? If it was NOT enough to prove it, how is it enough to prove he ever had more undersized fish than he did upon reaching short? Did they photograph the undersized fish at the time? Or did they just write a ticket for 72 undersized fish when there were only 69 and then claim he had to have tossed the others?
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Speaking of the bill of rights, when's the next time we're supposed to hear about that third amendment case that was in the news last year?
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May 7, 2014 19:02
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John Kruk posted:Can closely held corporations owned by Jehovah Witnesses stop paying for blood transfusions? Basically no. 1. The court specifically say that the decision applies only to contraceptives and not blood transfusions (their example). This technically means that the issue is still open, but it's a pretty good sign. 2. The RFRA test failed on the "least restrictive means" provision of the law. There is a separate program set up so that employees of religious employers can get free contraception through a different source - and this is less restrictive on religious beliefs than requiring that the employer cover it. There is no such program set up for blood transfusions, and it may not be practical. esquilax fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 17:36
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redcheval posted:I've read that vasectomies are still covered for men, but does anyone have any information on whether or not Hobby Lobby would cover tubal ligation? Covering vasectomies was never a requirement, though most companies do cover it (usually with a copay though). Tubal ligation is required to be covered and they did not mention it in the court case, so more than likely they are covering it.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:55
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jackofarcades posted:Even if it was only used for preventing pregnancy, preventing pregnancy is a pretty loving huge part of controlling a woman's life. Which is partly why the court assumed / conceded for sake of argument that providing free birth control was important and a compelling government interest. One of the key factors in the case is that the government implemented an alternative route with which to provide it - however Hobby Lobby and their employees could not access this route. This means that there existed a less-restrictive means available to achieving that goal. Basically, the court assumed that free birth control was really really important and still ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:22
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Amarkov posted:The core problem with Hobby Lobby is that Congress acted stupidly. They wrote a contraceptive exemption that only applied to nonprofits without any coherent reason (beyond "hey the Catholics are mad"), and they wrote a dumb clause into the RFRA that makes it automatically supersede all future legislation. Technically the contraceptive regulation and the exemption were drafted by HHS/the executive/Obama. Congress only said "preventive care", the rest was Obama.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:44
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(Not directed at anyone) As far as I can tell, the fact that it was pseudo-abortion didn't play in the decision at all - only that they were religiously opposed to it and there were other accommodations available. If the case were about literal abortion, I'm not sure what reasoning they would have used to strike it down. Abortion as a medical procedure seems to be lumped in with blood transfusions and vaccinations.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:58
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kelvron posted:Was it in here that someone did the effort posts on insurance providers and treatments and how drug costs are impacted by purchasing agreements? I haven't been able to find it. It was McAlister, during March. I don't think anything they wrote had any bearing on the actual legal case, though.
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Jun 30, 2014 20:11
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evilweasel posted:You're being willfully obtuse, not Ginsburg. First, that a for-profit corporation can have a religious belief is absurd. Second, the RFRA was passed in a specific context that is listed in its preamble, all of which you've willfully ignored because the history and context makes clear that what was being overturned was the rule that a law of general applicability was not a substantial burden on an individual's freedom of religion rights. It was not to make a new rule out of thin air and so your attempt to argue that the context of the words immediately surrounding it is all that one would look at is absurd. It's important to note that only Sotomayor joined that part of the dissent. Breyer and Kagan explicitly did not join the part of the opinion that said that the RFRA does not apply to for-profit corporations. While I doubt it majorly changes your opinion, you're arguing in favor of a 2-person dissent, not a 4-person one.
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Jun 30, 2014 22:12
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Gregor Samsa posted:You can tell him that the supreme court does not agree with his first amendment reasoning, insofar as that is not what they based the decision on and declined to address the issue. Uh yes they do, that's a major piece of the opinion's reasoning. quote:As we will show, Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA's definition of "persons." But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings. A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another. When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people. For example, extending Fourth Amendment protection to corporations protects the privacy interests of employees and others associated with the company. Protecting corporations from government seizure of their property without just compensation protects all those who have a stake in the corporations' financial well-being. And protecting the free-exercise rights [*14] of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies. esquilax fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 01:51
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Gregor Samsa posted:The RFRA is not the First Amendment. They punted on the First Amendment question, as far as I understand. I think this is noted in Ginsbergs dissent, and in any case was mentioned on SCOTUSblog as well. I'm on a phone, otherwise I'd try to track it down. You're right, my bad. I thought you were talking about individual/corporate rights not the differentiation between RFRA rights/1A rights esquilax fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 02:39
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