This week or next, the United States Supreme Court will decide Sibelius v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. The case concerns the preventive care mandate in regulations promulgated under the Affordable Care Act. The mandate requires most employers to provide employees with free birth control. The core issue is whether for-profit corporations, whose owners have religious objections to certain forms of contraception such as abortifacients, can claim rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendments free exercise of religion clause. The United States Court of Appeals split on this issue. The RFRA was passed in 1993 in response to a high court decision, authored by Justice Scalia, in Employment Division v Smith, which held that generally applicable laws that do not single out particular religious believers for differential treatment are constitutional under the free exercise clause, even if the laws in question burden the religious believers exercise of religion in a way that is different from the public at large. For example, the law at issue in Employment Division was a law prohibiting the use of peyote, because it is hallucinogenic. This law burdened certain Native Americans who use peyote as part of their religion. But it was a generally applicable law that did not single out these Native Americans for differential treatment. By the same token, the preventive care mandate does not single out Catholics or other believers for differential treatment; it is a generally applicable law. But Employment Division has been criticized, and the RFRA was passed to partially overturn it, essentially.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 01:19:04 +0000
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