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SCOTUS decisions

Junebug said:
I love it when people tell others how they have to act in order to be "true Christians." It's so quaint. I must've missed Sunday School the day they taught the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not trade with China.
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When the owners of Hobby Lobby took a case all the way to the SCOTUS to protect their sincerely held religious beliefs, they kind of invited scrutiny into how they live out that faith, no?
 
RJKarl said:
Many non-kneejerk reactions (like from Justices and several well respected constitutional scholars) have clearly and concisely stated how awful and dangerous this decision could be. They all seem to agree that opening this door was a huge mistake.
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Most any decision can be awful and dangerous. Just because the court decided A does not automatically lead to the court deciding Z. That's why the court gets to keep on making decisions. Could and will are two very different things.

This is all born out of the government attempting to dictate that a private business must pay for birth control that may cause an abortion. It is neither surprising nor wrong that the court found a way to assure a person whose religious conscience feels abortion is murder would not be forced to pay for such medication. And it is also pretty darn clear the state has no compelling overriding interest in forcing someone of that ilk to make that payment. Beyond euthanasia I can think of no other issue besides abortion that would create such a lightening rod medical payment argument arise. It is, frankly, one of the more fascinating factual situations the court has ever been asked to address.
 
RJKarl said:
There's a new case working its way up saying it's unconstitutional for the feds to offer tax credits to participants. This would destroy ACA and could directly lead to single payer. Millions would lose coverage. Insurance companies could throw people off the roles and raise prices dramatically.
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LOL if you believe the court, after upholding the ACA just a few months ago, would completely unravel it.
 
PhDeac said:
Apparently, this ruling may not apply just to abortofecitiouses or whatever they're called.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-expanded-hobby-lobby-20140702-column.html#page=1
The day after handing down the Hobby Lobby decision on Monday, the court issued orders pertaining to six pending cases in which employers claimed religious objections to allcontraceptive services required under the Affordable Care Act. The court either ordered appeals courts to reconsider their rejection of the employers' claims in light of the Hobby Lobby decision, or let stand lower courts' endorsement of those claims.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/07/wider-impact-of-hobby-lobby-ruling/
The Supreme Court sent a fairly strong signal on Tuesday that its ruling giving some for-profit businesses a right not to provide birth control services to their female workers goes beyond the specific methods at issue in that decision. It issued a series of orders on six cases, each of which involved owners who objected to all of the pregnancy-related services mandated under the new federal health care law.
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"Less than a day after the United States Supreme Court issued its divisive ruling on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it has already begun to toss aside the supposedly narrow interpretation of the decision. On Tuesday, the Supremes ordered lower courts to rehear any cases where companies had sought to deny coverage for any type of contraception, not just the specific types Hobby Lobby was opposed to.

Down the rabbit hole or no big deal counselors? Honest ?.
 
His point is that if they're going to claim to be Christians and a Christian business then they should do so not for political expediency or for scoring points re: abortion, but should actually do it in areas where it is not going to benefit them as well. He's not attempting to say "gotcha" in a legal sense, he's attempting to point out the overt hypocrisy of snagging onto one tangential issue in the Christian faith in order to avoid offering a service you disagree with while simultaneously contributing to what the author feels is a far worse offense: enabling China's human rights abuse.
 
Now that the government is going to be more in the spotlight in their provision of these somewhat controversial contraceptions, I wonder how long it will be until a religious group brings a claim that the government shouldn't be providing them either since it's offensive to their religious beliefs and is using their tax money to do so.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
His point is that if they're going to claim to be Christians and a Christian business then they should do so not for political expediency or for scoring points re: abortion, but should actually do it in areas where it is not going to benefit them as well. He's not attempting to say "gotcha" in a legal sense, he's attempting to point out the overt hypocrisy of snagging onto one tangential issue in the Christian faith in order to avoid offering a service you disagree with while simultaneously contributing to what the author feels is a far worse offense: enabling China's human rights abuse.
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This. Millions of US citizens are Christians of one flavor or another. When a "sincerely held" belief of a person flying the Christian flag is examined in the SCOTUS, it is perfectly reasonable, and even desirable, for the rest of us Christians to have a public debate about how we should all be living out the Christian faith, and about how such high-profile people are representing the faith. This particular piece was written by a religion writer, not a legal writer, about religious issues.
 
Sure. I'm also not a Christian. I also do not attempt to use any religious excuse to get out of doing something I don't want to.

I'm not saying that I'm a beacon of support for ending China's human rights' violations, but I'm also not putting my faith out as a reason why I should be treated differently under a neutrally applicable law.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Sure. I'm also not a Christian. I also do not attempt to use any religious excuse to get out of doing something I don't want to.

I'm not saying that I'm a beacon of support for ending China's human rights' violations, but I'm also not putting my faith out as a reason why I should be treated differently under a neutrally applicable law.
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I find your lack of faith disturbing.
 
Junebug said:
If I were to apply the MO of your article, I would say:

"Well, then you, sir, are a hypocrite. And because of that, I doubt the sincerity of your views on abortion."

See how ridiculous that is?
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My point is their sincerely held beliefs seem to benefit them while other beliefs that seemingly would cut against them they choose to just ignore. It's expedient for them to do so.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Sure. I'm also not a Christian. I also do not attempt to use any religious excuse to get out of doing something I don't want to.

I'm not saying that I'm a beacon of support for ending China's human rights' violations, but I'm also not putting my faith out as a reason why I should be treated differently under a neutrally applicable law.
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Numbers - I think you know better than to label something a "religious excuse". You may not be religious. But that doesn't make you right and them wrong. I think there should be some room to respect the practicality of their view.

From the perspective of the HL owner they were being asked to pay for a treatment they have reason to believe kills unborn children. I think if I told you the price of continuing to stay employed was that you must buy the bullets I will put in a gun I will then shoot to kill the neighbor's little boy down the street, you might decide to fight me on it. You may not agree with the HL owner's view, but that's more or less a fair analogy of their view. The government now has the power to make us buy products others will use. The court has now noted the power to determine the content of said product has some limits.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
My point is their sincerely held beliefs seem to benefit them while other beliefs that seemingly would cut against them they choose to just ignore. It's expedient for them to do so.
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How do you know what they choose to ignore? I don't like China's human rights records. And I'm typing on a computer made in China right now. Does that make me a hypocrite? Or am I supporting factory workers in China who'd be that much more fucked if I weren't typing on this keyboard?
 
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And now the government is funding these types of birth control which religious people subsidize anyway. It's not as if they're directly removed from it.

The point being made about Chinese goods is that they are using it to their distinct advantage in the marketplace. Also it's certain that the gun that will kill the child is actually going to be murder under the law. Using these devices is not murder under a neutrally applicable law. Not remotely the same.
 
Also I never said I was right and they were wrong. It doesn't even matter if you're right or wrong as long as you hold a sincere religious belief. MY point all along has been it's absolutely absurd that if you can tie your rationale for believing something to a religion that you can exempt yourself from paying for something legally required by the government. That's not freedom of religion, that's freedom for religion but not for secular viewpoints.

In this case if I were against the use of these forms of birth control because they might be cruel to a yet-to-be-formed fetus but it wasn't a religious reason, then I wouldn't be covered by this ruling or RFRA.
 
DeacMan said:
How do you know what they choose to ignore? I don't like China's human rights records. And I'm typing on a computer made in China right now. Does that make me a hypocrite? Or am I supporting factory workers in China who'd be that much more fucked if I weren't typing on this keyboard?
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If your religious beliefs are such that you oppose medicines and devices so deeply that you take a case to the Supreme Court, it's egregious hypocrisy to invest in companies that make these medicines and devices.

How anyone can make excuses for this is another trip down hypocrisy lane.

When you are investing over $70M, you damn well better know where the fund is investing your money or are breaching your fiduciary responsibilities. With that kind of money, you can tell fund managers, "We won't allow our money to be invested in companies that make or distribute this list of products and services."

It's done every day.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Also I never said I was right and they were wrong. It doesn't even matter if you're right or wrong as long as you hold a sincere religious belief. MY point all along has been it's absolutely absurd that if you can tie your rationale for believing something to a religion that you can exempt yourself from paying for something legally required by the government. That's not freedom of religion, that's freedom for religion but not for secular viewpoints.

In this case if I were against the use of these forms of birth control because they might be cruel to a yet-to-be-formed fetus but it wasn't a religious reason, then I wouldn't be covered by this ruling or RFRA.
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Do you believe that pacifists should be able to object conscientiously to military service?
 
In the event of a draft? No. If there is a law that has nothing to do with religion in its crafting or its passage I don't think you should be able to cite any religious reasons to exempt yourself from the law unless you are also able to be exempt through non-religious reasons.
 
Anyways, at some point the court is going to have to establish some sort of criteria for gauging "sincerely held" beliefs. I think totality of the circumstances would be fair with no presumption present for either side. There's already a case out there where the company owner said that he doesn't think the government has a right to compel him to pay for anything, whether it be jack Daniels or birth control. He's claiming he has sincerely held beliefs that all types of birth control are against his religion (Catholicism).

Where do we draw the line? Do we just let these cases all go to the courts? I think this is actually a case where the floodgates of litigation have been opened - allowing predominantly right wing business owners to respond in court to the ACA passed by Obama.
 
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