National Review Makes Terrible Arguments on Hobby Lobby Case
Ed Brayton with some excellent analysis of why some arguments in favor of the Hobby Lobby case just don’t fly.
Um. No. The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye was not a corporation in the sense that Hobby Lobby is (the fact that it begins with “church” might have tipped him off. In fact, the ruling itself explicitly says, “Petitioner Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. (Church), is a not for profit corporation organized under Florida law in 1973.” Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation. Those things are treated differently under the Affordable Care Act.
And that last sentence is very slippery. The term “organizational persons” is very misleading. Religious non-profits, like churches, are of course covered under the Free Exercise clause. That’s why churches do not have to comply with anti-discrimination laws, for example, when those laws do apply to all for-profit corporations. There is a big distinction legally between religious non-profits and for-profit corporations that happen to be owned by religious people. The former is exempted from a wide range of laws precisely because of the Free Exercise clause, but the former are not (though they are not entirely uncovered by it; Eugene Volokh has an excellent and thorough discussion of the question of corporate personhood in regard to the Free Exercise Clause here).
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