- The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that employers with religious objections can opt out of providing contraception coverage under Obamacare.
The ruling deals directly with only a small provision of Obamacare and will not take down the entire law but it amounts to a huge black eye for Obamacare and its backers. The justices have given Obamacare opponents their most significant political victory against the health care law, reinforcing their argument that the law and President Barack Obama are encroaching on Americans’ freedoms.
...womp.
So bear with me a second... 1) The ACA is a tax (according to the Roberts Court) 2) Money is speech (according to the Roberts Court) 3) Religious exceptions trump the paying of a tax (according to the Roberts Court) So it doesn't take a genius to make the next leap. That is, how can anybody be forced to pay any taxes now, given that almost everything the Federal Government does is offensive to someone's religious beliefs? If I'm a Christian Scientist entrepreneur, can I simply not pay for any health coverage? If I'm a Quaker, can I refuse to pay the portion of my tax that goes to DoD? And so on. Ah, but I suspect not. I think a far simpler explanation is that these extreme right wing Catholics who make up the 5 member majority on the Court are letting their ideology control national policy just a tad too much, eh? Remember back in 1960 when JFK had to give a big national speech assuring mostly conservative voters that he wouldn't let his Catholic faith or his allegiance to the Pope trump national interests? Well that got flipped on its head sometime in the last half century. It's a joke (unfortunately, a joke of which we're all the butt) that this is all done in the name of originalism. Separation of church and state is dead, flat out dead.
Wait, holy crap. This just got a lot better. The company's retirement plan invests in contraception manufacturers.
Myth of the Rule of Law http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm
Anti-Papism? There is statistical over representation of Catholics
It is a strange way to stack a deck. I assume catholics to end abortion and The Jews to continue it?
This seems to tread right into the gay marriage question, doesn't it? If an employer has religious objections to gay marriage, then wouldn't they be in the right to not pay into spousal benefits? Interestingly, as b_b suggests, this seems a very Catholic decision. However, to date, it looks like the SCOTUS isn't planning on siding with the Vatican when it comes to gay marriage. Interesting. “A good Catholic meddles in politics” -Pope Francis A feather in Hillary's campaign cap, I think. This makes a powerful argument that the next person making appointments to the Supreme Court should be a woman.
My whole problem with the gay marriage issue is that I feel like it's a separation of church and state sort of thing. I feel like the government shouldn't be involved with marriage at all to begin with.
It is a separation of church and state thing. No one is asking churches to change who they allow to marry. That's not the same as having legal rights to marriage. Marriage has two aspects: a legal one and a religious one. So yes, the government HAS TO GO THERE because it has already been there since the Magna Carta. At the center of this is Common Law and jurisprudence. I'll say this again so you don't ask: I am only going to give a brief history and logic of legal (civic) marriage. This will have no implications to the history of who was allow to marry inside a church. This is about the part you go through whether you call a vicar or just a sea captain (in my case, my wife and I were married by her best friend from grade school -- who is also the state prosecutor of New Hampshire). Civic marriage has been fundamental to Common Law. The US federal government and all US states except Louisiana follow Common Law. Common Law is an ever-growing set of legal precedents that can change both by legislature and by judiciary process. Much of the marriage part of it is older than the Constitution or the US as a nation -- we're talking English Common Law. Just as a contract signed before the US broke off from the UK can still be binding, so too our marriage laws have precedents going way back. So what? That means civic marriage is thoroughly tested in every court. Civic marriage is sacrosanct, legally speaking. Once X marries Y, no hospital can say "no, X's parents get to call the shots about X's pull-the-plug request." Y calls the shot. If the hospital disobeys Y as a representative for X, they'll get sued and lose. Any para-marriage act is untested. It's not clear how much a hospital or even a bank has to respect a partner in a civil union. It doesn't have the same divorce procedures, it varies even between the few states that have them, and it definitely doesn't get you its own standard deduction on your tax forms. I mentioned Louisiana earlier, as they are a Canon Law state. This means their state laws evolved from the Napoleonic Code. Their courts have almost none of the jurisprudence powers. This means the judge cannot interpret which precedent is at the root of a decision -- it's only how the law was written that matters. A Canon Law nation or state can make up a para-marriage and it will have all legal bindings. France had this for about a decade with the PACS. A Common Law state can make up a new para-marriage contract type, but it can be shot down as legally invalid by a high enough court. The most recent precedent for the solidity of civic marriage is Loving vs Virginia, 1967. This Supreme Court decision tossed out all anti-miscegenation laws, not just Virginia's: it was no longer legal to bar a checkerboard couple from getting married. Let me boil this down: gay marriage is civic marriage, or no marriage contract is meaningful. There is nothing in the earliest legal assessment of marriage that determined who could be the parties involved, with the exception of blood relatives. It was founded to determine lineage of property, and now determines how easily one other person could ruin your credit rating. Marriage provides an amazing set of legal features. Don't let random churches steal that value.
I've heard it said that we should ban all marriages and permit civil unions between anybody and have the civil union be the thing that matters. Let the churches run whatever ceremonies they want - if it doesn't happen in court it doesn't count for legal purposes. And then we all woke up.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326926331/companies-can-refuse-to-cover-contraception-supreme-court-says how nice that they confined this ruling to their particular religious preferencesThis decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs.
Let us also note that items such as Viagra are still covered, the only thing that changed is contraceptives for women. I really wish I had something more useful to say than "this is what happens when old conservative dudes make decisions for the entire country".
This is a perfect example of how the American government is rotten to the core. Electoral action is useless in the face of a partisan Supreme Court and a sold-out legislative and executive. It's time to stop voting and start organizing and taking direct action against those who would limit freedom.
So... ummm... mass lynchings? What does "direct action" mean? I assume that means taking the law into your own hands, which is kind of what five white guys just did. Ooh, ooh! Can we blare loud music at Congress the way they got Noriega to leave Panama? How about adding that blast wave thing that makes you feel like puking if you don't disperse? Someone could set up a few along K Street and claim it's a new form of pest control. I'm not going to stop voting. Too many people died or got beat up to get me that right. I don't piss on my ancestors' graves (especially the ones that built the interfaith cemetery where I already have a plot... don't ask). The annoying slam to the lunatic right has gone about as far as commerce can stand. Texas is turning roads back to gravel because they refuse to raise the taxes for highway maintenance. That's a signature end-of-civ move. When you annoy enough businesses, things happen.
both you and pseydtonne are right. It's ignorant to stop voting and void the struggles of our national history.. but it is ignorant to assume it is anything more than, and I laughed out loud at this, sticking a piece of paper into a glorified trash can.
It is ignorant to assume that voting is that valueless. Instead of going off because none of you seem to remember 1965 and the people that got beat up so you could vote, I will focus on the process (whether you approve of it or not). Let's say you don't vote. I assume you won't. I do. Let's assume we live in the same riding. My vote will be what you call the memory hole while yours won't. My candidate would win. You don't get the laws you want. Now let's take it further. Imagine we both want the same candidate to win. Let's say it's also a district with a religious population (we got a lot of those in the US). Pentecostals will vote, because their churches get them to vote. Then it'll be all their votes versus ours... sorry, mine. Fundies get their way and we lose our rights. You can keep your childish ignorance. If you don't think the above happens, you haven't been paying attention since 1980.
Im sorry friend you must've misunderstood me. I think we should exercise our right to vote, always, whenever the opportunity arises and as individuals we feel like placing our vote on the subject. Meanwhile, however, on the sole and direct circumstance of a U.S. presidential election, a non-Representative American citizen's vote does not decide who will lead the country. That doesn't mean we should vote for the rep of our choice, the senator, mayor, local legislation, or any opportunity including even that 'useless' vote on presidents because our ancestors fought for our right to do so, and our input at least as a statistic is recorded too. I never said I won't vote. Don't get me wrong.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/best-lines-hobby-lobby-decision MoJo with some quotes from Bader Ginsburg's dissent.