The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Wheaton College doesn’t have to abide by the Obamacare contraceptive coverage requirement as long as the Christian school tells the Obama administration that it has a religious objection to providing birth control to its employees and students.
The order from a 6-3 court, and a scathing dissent, may foreshadow the second round of legal battles expected to take place in the Supreme Court later this year. On Monday, the court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that closely held companies could be exempted from the contraception mandate if their owners had religious objections.
This did not go over too well with three of the Supreme Court Justices. Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagen, who issued a frustrated response.
“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today,” Sotomayor wrote. “After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position.”
Sotomayor also stressed the rarity of a Supreme Court emergency injunction, arguing that Wheaton’s potential for fines didn’t warrant the high court’s intervention. And she questioned whether the self-certification form that the Illinois college would fill out as part of that accommodation is a legitimate burden.
“Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs,” she wrote. “But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.”
Well it looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dead right in her dissent to the Hobby Lobby ruling.
Not that any of us should be surprised.
It will be very interesting to see what a democratic house & senate will do if we'e lucky in Nov. So much to repeal...I dream about getting rid of Thomas & Scalia, they are the greatest embarrassment to the court and our entire system of democracy.
ReplyDeleteCitizens United & Medicaid expansion #1. HBO is running the fantastic mini series of John Adams..the dimwits should be forced to watch although they wouldn't understand anyway.....esp Palin and the NRA. Our constitution was a torturous document to these brilliant men and watching these old male judges destroy it in 2014 is a disgrace.
don't forget roberts. he's a pandering biased asshole who deserves to be chief justice of the scotus a much as my cat does.
DeleteThe Hobby Lobby judicial debacle continues. Wheaton College isn’t so much concerned with having to pay for contraceptives, what they are actually worried about is just women taking them at all. What those supporting these organizations claiming “religious freedom” don’t seem to understand is that religious freedom doesn’t mean pushing your religious ideologies on others. In fact it’s sort of the exact opposite idea. But more than likely all much of the Religious Right is really concerned about is stripping women of their rights and their ability to control their own bodies.
ReplyDeletehttp://aattp.org/misogynist-scotus-deals-another-blow-to-women/
Justice Sottomayor continued "...retreats from that position. That action evinces disregard for even the newest of this Court’s precedents and undermines confidence in this institution."
ReplyDeleteDistilling the essence from the usual elegant and precise language, we get something like
The court is behaving like IDIOTS by being inconsistent from one day to the next, and I, for one, am going to keep telling the court they are being IDIOTS.
Justice Sottomayor knows when she is dealing with bratty toddlers.
shorter version of Sottomayor's dissent.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the "minefield", Chief Justice Roberts. You created it and you are stuck with it.
Obamacare Has Already Dramatically Increased Access To Free Birth Control
ReplyDeleteMore than half of privately insured women are getting free birth control under President Barack Obama's health law, a major coverage shift that's likely to advance.
This week the Supreme Court allowed some employers with religious scruples to opt out, but most companies appear to be going in the opposite direction.
Recent data from the IMS Institute document a sharp change during 2013. The share of privately insured women who got their birth control pills without a copayment jumped to 56 percent, from 14 percent in 2012. The law's requirement that most health plans cover birth control as prevention, at no additional cost to women, took full effect in 2013.
The average annual saving for women was $269.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/04/free-birth-control-obamacare_n_5557169.html
Maybe they're finally figuring out that giving their customers free birth control saves them a boatload of money they would otherwise have to pay for maternity care.
DeleteThe women get free birth control = win.
The insurance companies save money on maternity care = win.
No doubt that Muslim organizations are treasuring every blunder this supreme court is making.
ReplyDelete1:37? Care to explain that, please?
DeleteThe GOP made sure the federal government couldn't fund abortion with the Hyde Amendment. How long will it take them to introduce a Hyde-like amendment to prohibit ACA coverage for all forms of contraception?
ReplyDeleteThe GOP is perfectly happy to let women go to Canada and other countries for safe, private, affordable abortions.
DeleteAbortion control is about controlling poor women.
Otherwise known as "here we go again." These ScaliaLaw mullahs may be smart operatives but they are clueless about the lives they affect.
DeleteThe law says that female employees and females in employees families get birth control coverage. Either the employer's health plan has to cover it or for the religiously biased employer, the government will cover it.
ReplyDeleteThe government requires notification that an employer's health plan is deficient in order to make sure the law is complied with.
Wheaton College doesn't want to tell the government that its health plan doesn't comply with the law. If that demand is eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, the government will simply implement an inspection system to detect non-compliant health plans.
All Wheaton College will accomplish from this dainty fear of a single page form is the taxpayers have to pay for the inspection system.
How ironic that Catholics were abhorred in this country's early days and now they hold the majority on the Supreme Court. We'd be fools to expect good legal judgements from this bunch when the leading conservative, Scalia, believes the Devil is a person who is smarter now than when he was during Jesus' time--gone from driving pigs over a cliff to convincing people not to believe in the Christian God.
ReplyDeletehttp://nymag.com/news/features/antonin-scalia-2013-10/index3.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/7048280089/
ReplyDeleteWhat a mess! One nasty, stinky can of worms got opened with that decision.
ReplyDeleteM from MD
Can't wait for a muslim run company to become a big corporation and require all of it's female employees to wear headscarves. Let's see what the SCOTUS does with that.
ReplyDeleteHow about a Hindu company that forbids it's employees from brown bagging any lunches that contain meat? Nothing like enforcing vegetarianism on religious grounds.