SCOTUS Decides Hobby Lobby Has Right To Determine Employees' Religious Beliefs

The defenders of Hobby Lobby's decision to withhold contraception coverage to their employees claim that the government can not force Hobby Lobby's owners to pay for contraception which is against their religious beliefs and that Hobby Lobby isn't forbidding employees from purchasing contraception with their cash compensation (just barring it from the compensation in the form of health insurance). Today's decision ignores the fungibility of compensation and the right of the employee to utilize their compensation within their own religious or philosophical beliefs, and that the employers' religious beliefs supersedes that of their employees and extends the employers' beliefs to wherever their employees compensation is spent. Best not to work for or be customer to any business that holds the belief of medical science is the devils work, since they can continue to get tax rebate for providing health care while refusing to pay for insurance premiums. Hobby Lobby's central motivation had nothing to do with contraception as Mother Jones pointed out earlier this year, that their retirement funds included pharmaceutical companies that produce the same contraceptive products that claiming are against their absolute religious beliefs. As if their religious beliefs were optional when dividends were involved but immutable when their employees chose to utilize that aspect of health services. The employer is given the right in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision to make the most personal intimate decisions on behalf of their employees as if their personal decisions not to use Viagra or some convoluted religious rationale to be opposed to Lenscrafters could then be extended to their employees, because otherwise they would be harmed. The employer or the spouse of the employer still is not being forced to take contraception themselves, but the choice and liberty of individuals use contraception as part of their health care services are having their freedom infringed upon since they can no longer make the health care decisions with advice from their doctor.

The argument that the employer should not be compensate employees with health care services they have an issue with could be easily resolved by the employer not supplying health insurance at all (while forgoing the tax benefits) and letting the employees enter the health care exchange markets for their insurance.But then Hobby Lobby owners won't be able to impose their decisions on their employees, and their religious convictions are opposed to letting individuals chose for themselves how to lead their lives outside of work?

To claim that Hobby Lobby has right to impose their beliefs on their employees is contrafactual just it is farcical to claim that the employees have a religious "freedom" to impose on the owners to use specific health care services with the profits obtained from the labor from the employees. The employer isn't harmed from the employee spending their earned compensation (either cash, healthcare, paid time off, etc) as they see fit, even if it is for contraception or paid-time off used to be drunk and hungover it has no effect on the payer of that compensation. SCOTUS in the 5-4 decision and siding with a business that was seeking premium subsidies but on their own terms were to be extended universally the employees of Hobby Lobby would be entitled to impose their religious beliefs that the owner would have to give away his possessions as Jesus Christ commanded, and just as Hobby Lobby continues to collect dividends contraception producing companies, the employees would be allowed to keep their own possessions.

Re: Free Birth Control and Unfree Photographers

 

So everyone has a right to the market when they open a business, and a right to withhold services and resources based upon nothing more than spite? That is an opinion that could only be held by individuals who have the privilege of being a member of the dominant class. Acceptability of excluding all those that do not meet the majority's expectation is a sign of irrationality; and Jacob Sullum is free to proselytize the right to refuse your fellow Americans without a viable reason, but to appear on a venue such as Reason.com is abundant with irony.

The individual has a right not to offer consumer services to the general public, but once you take the endeavour to provide those consumer services the only way that it encroaches on the business owners right is when the owner choses to profess the withholding of services are based upon the demographic group that the consumer belongs to. The action, overt by the choice of the business owner, to choose to withhold while offending the perspective customer is impractical and unnecessary since the business owner could have simply stated “sorry, we aren't available that week, could I refer you to so-and-so they would be able to help you out.” Most of the readers of Reason.com will likely agree with the sentiment that Title II of the Civil Rights Act which bars discrimination within businesses that are available to the public is utterly irrational, but the social contract that provides government services to businesses implies that the businesses should be for the public that paid for the infrastructure the businesses utilize on a daily basis. Would it acceptable if businesses that did discriminate, that the local government would roll back the roads that lead to the business? To discriminate against counter parties that did business with the discriminating owner? If there is a right to discriminate then any business exercising that right would have a lot more to lose than just one gig for a betrothed couple that the business owner despised. You have a right not to participate in any market, but once you choose to enter said market it is no longer your right to discriminate; and once you do choose to infringe on the rights of individuals for simple practicality find any other excuse to withhold services or goods and return to under whatever bridge you come from. Every market relies upon public goods, and deny that fact is irrational and unreasonable.

In regards to Hobby Lobby, they are receiving tax credits (which they free are to reject) when they provide their employees with health-care insurance that happens to include birth control. If they were so adamant they would refuse the tax credits and pay for health insurance that did not include birth control (which would be difficult to find since birth control has such a great epidemiological benefit that any insurance company denying birth control would see their expenditures go up and so the market and reason has spoken and few health insurance policies are offered sans birth control at reasonable rates) as well as the difference in costs that are being set by the for-profit insurance companies. Hobby Lobby, while paying lip service to their right to principle, would rather bemoan their inability to access government services and benefits on their own terms. But when your cant stick to stated principles because inconvenience, and you would rather have them subsidized than pay the true costs of those principles they are no longer principles but just a hobby.