US FEDERAL LAW: THE FIRST AMENDMENT
The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. It established a separation of church and state that prohibited the federal government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” It also prohibits the government, in most cases, from interfering with a person’s religious beliefs or practices.
The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, extended religious freedom by preventing states from enacting laws that would advance or inhibit any one religion.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations
By
Adam Liptak
June 30, 2014
The Supreme Court
ruled on Monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. It was, a dissent said, “a decision of startling breadth.”
The 5-to-4 ruling, which applied to two companies owned by Christian families, opened the door to many challenges from corporations over laws that they claim violate their religious liberty.
The decision, issued on the last day of the term, reflected what appears to be a key characteristic of the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — an inclination toward nominally incremental rulings with vast potential for great change.
The contraceptive coverage requirement was challenged by two corporations whose owners say they try to run their businesses on Christian principles:
Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which makes wood cabinets. The requirement has also been challenged in 50 other cases, according to the
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Hobby Lobby.
Justice Alito said the requirement that the two companies provide contraception coverage imposed a substantial burden on their religious liberty. Hobby Lobby, he said, could face annual fines of $475 million if it failed to comply.
Justice Alito said he accepted for the sake of argument that the government had a compelling interest in making sure women have access to contraception. But he said there were ways of doing that without violating the companies’ religious rights.
The government could pay for the coverage, he said. Or it could employ the accommodation already in use for certain nonprofit religious organizations, one requiring insurance companies to provide the coverage. The majority did not go so far as to endorse the accommodation.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined the majority opinion.
Justice Ginsburg, joined on this point by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the court had for the first time extended religious-freedom protections to “the commercial, profit-making world.”
“The court’s expansive notion of corporate personhood,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faiths.”
She added that the contraception coverage requirement was vital to women’s health and reproductive freedom. Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined almost all of her dissent, but they said there was no need to take a position on whether corporations may bring claims under the religious liberty law.
The two sides differed on the sweep of the ruling.
“Although the court attempts to cabin its language to closely held corporations,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private.” She added that corporations could now object to “health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage, or according women equal pay for substantially similar work.”
LBGTs are heavy into art, music, and drama and just as diverse in expressing themselves as heterosexuals.
