I’ve been seeing a good deal of overcooked hyperbole and half-baked analysis on the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, and I’d like to clear up just a few misconceptions that I’ve seen recirculating on the internet.
The case does not elevate corporate persons over women
I’ve seen quite a few silly memes about this circulating on social media. Here is an outstanding one:
Fetus = person
Corporation = person
Women = not so much#HobbyLobby #WarOnWomen pic.twitter.com/x9pJstXBhh— JamesFromTheInternet (@JamesFTInternet) June 30, 2014
The reality is not that the court is elevating the rights of an abstract object over real people, but rather balancing the rights of business owners against the rights of their employees. The majority opinion is completely explicit about this :
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.
This is a form of legalized class warfare, pitting the religious beliefs and financial interests of the owning class against the reproductive health of the working class, but let’s not pin too much on the commonly-used legal fiction of corporate personhood. This case is ultimately about real people trying to control the actions of other real people. That said, it is probably much narrower than you think, because . . .
The case does not apply to most employees or most contraceptive methods
Unless you work for a family-owned closely-held for-profit corporation whose owners purport to hold a “sincere religious belief that life begins at conception” and you hope to use one of the “4 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives” at issue in the case, the odds are good that the outcome will not affect you directly in the short term. The knock-on effects are as yet unclear, however, the entire problem can be solved by our elected legislators because . . .
The case does not make up new religious rights or break any new Constitutional ground
This case is about whether regulations promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services are in violation of the terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). The court found that the “contraceptive mandate, as applied to closely held corporations, violates RFRA” and that their “decision on that statutory question makes it unnecessary to reach the First Amendment claim raised by Conestoga and the Hahns.”
RFRA seemed like a pretty decent idea at the time (especially to Native Americans) it seems unlikely that when Joe Biden voted for it and Bill Clinton signed it they could have foreseen the uses to which it would eventually be put. The good news is that it is relatively easy for the legislature to carve out an exception to RFRA for the ACA, if only they have the will and moral courage to do so.
