If [the Supreme Court] decide[s] to establish a corporate right to free exercise of religion, though, they’ll have to grapple with their own reasoning in a 2006 case called Domino’s Pizza Inc. v. McDonald. In that case, the sole shareholder of a corporation — an African-American man — alleged that Domino’s had been motivated by racial animus to violate several of its contracts with his business, and in so doing had violated his civil rights. The court was not sympathetic. [I]t is fundamental corporation and agency law — indeed it can be said to be the whole purpose of corporation and agency law — that the shareholder and contracting officer of a corporation has no rights and is exposed to no liability under the corporation’s contracts, the court ruled. The corporate form and the rules of agency protected his personal assets, even though he negotiated, signed, performed, and sought to enforce contracts for [the corporation] The corporate form and the rules of agency similarly deny him rights under those contracts. In other words, the court effectively held that a corporation could not be infused with the racial identity of its owner for the purposes of upholding the owner’s civil rights. The question is whether the atmospheric peculiarities of this case — Obamacare, subsidized contraception — will motivate the court to reverse its own reasoning.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 22:34:43 +0000
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