Notes on Hobby Lobby Case

The Hobby Lobby case has garnered a lot of attention, and folks picked up sides on ti very quickly. In our polarized, incendiary culture, we should take a breath in discussing new laws or supreme court rulings. One helpful idea would be to  try to read the relevant portions instead of responding to  a few points.

All Supreme Court precedents can be read narrowly, or they can be the seedbed for expansive rulings down the road. So it is with hobby Lobby case. It could be restricted to its narrow set of facts or it can become the locus for a variety of political claims under the aegis of free exercise of religion. If a parade of cases challenges aspects of laws, the Court is fully capable of applying balancing tests as it has in the past for first amendment rights, as we have not given absolute cover for any first Amendment right at this point.

First some background.The Smith Case (1990) ruled that religious exercise did not entitle a religious practice  to being exempt from the laws of the land. In response, Congress enacted a law designed for strict observance of religious exercise claims in the religious Freedom Restoration Act, RFRA. Liberals cheered this law as providing added protection to the rights of religious minorities that they felt the court ruling endangered by seeming to downplay the power of religious exercise in light of generally applied The Hobby Lobby case interprets the law as granting an exemption  to the owners of Hobby Lobby. It is a fine example that laws have consequences not envisioned by their advocates.

For over one hundred years we have  honored the legal fiction that corporations can be considered “persons” under our constitution. For years we have litigated corporate speech claims Of course freedom of the press has inherent corporate rights and the courts have spoken of corporate speech with a set of regulatory standards for well over a generation. This case could be fairly read as saying that being part of a corporate entity does not vitiate one’s exercise of religion, less than granting religious rights to corporate entities per se. That is why the Court emphasized closely  held corporate entities.

I do smile at the notion that closely held corporations, or any corporation, would  have religious rights. That could change church membership rolls. It could vastly help our financial concern of replacing a roof. I would love to hear our church session (board) struggle with offering Communion to a corporation and the mode of baptism.

We have CO status for those  whose faith leads them to object to all wars. We have made religious exceptions to the flag salute since World War II. We will be in for some interesting arguments if we do get a series of religious exemption requests for laws. Testing the centrality or sincerity of religious belief is a minefield that the establishment clause sought to avoid.

One wonders if the decision would be the same if the religion of the litigants would be a new or minority religious movement. One also wonders if the issue at hand were not contraceptive agents that could possibly  induce an abortion.The religious exemptions President Bush ordered toward the end of his term certainly leaned in this direction of privileging one religious viewpoint on the matter.

As a Christian, I worry about using one’s religious exercise to limit the religious beliefs of others,. Some would assert that the religious exercise of others somehow inhibits my religious exercise. The assumption would be that a certain brand of Christian belief should be dispositive over others, but a pluralist so religious society cannot and should not try to enshrine that into law. After all, Jesus said: Follow me,without the authority of the government.