No Longer Protecting People

Employees at Hobby Lobby no longer receive free insurance coverage for certain contraceptives, despite the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act specifying that such health plans must provide coverage for “all Food and Drug Administration…approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity as prescribed by a provider,” per the Health Resources and Services Administration’s guidelines.

Although we respect individual objections to emergency contraceptives, we don’t think a non-religious corporation ought to be legally regarded as having religious beliefs that can be compromised. The Supreme Court will soon be ruling on this issue, and we urge them to restore coverage to employees of Hobby Lobby.

In Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, a majority of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit granted an exemption to Hobby Lobby from the Affordable Care Act, stating that “the First Amendment logic of Citizens United” could be extended to reason that the corporation, as a person, had its free exercise of religious belief infringed upon by the federal government.

Hobby Lobby’s core legal argument is based upon the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which stipulates that the federal government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.” But the court and Hobby Lobby are both wrong in believing that the Affordable Care Act is burdening free exercise of religion.

It is not, for multiple reasons. As the Department of Justice notes in its brief on the matter, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act carries “forward the existing distinction between non-profit, religious organizations, which may engage in the exercise of religion, and for-profit, secular corporations, which may not.” A church can legitimately claim to have religious beliefs as a corporation, but Hobby Lobby cannot. Additionally, providing access to health plans which offer contraceptives (to employees who may or may not share the religious beliefs of the company’s leaders and who are capable of making belief-based choices on their own) is difficult to construe as a “substantial burden” on anyone’s personal exercise of religion.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the majority stated that the speech of corporations is equivalent to the speech of “citizens, or associations of citizens.” The 10th Circuit Court is guilty of egregiously flawed logic in attempting to take this idea and extend it to imply that a secular corporation can be regarded as having religious beliefs.