In the latest stinging First Amendment brushback to President Obama, the Supreme Court on Monday held the contraceptive mandate unlawful as applied to companies such as Hobby Lobby.
Mark Rienzi, the Becket Fund lawyer who represented Hobby Lobby: “The Court confirmed that Americans don’t give up their religious freedom when they open a family business.”
Contrary to the hysterica (e.g., the White House press secretary’s claim the ruling “jeopardizes the health of women”) the decision does not limit access to contraceptives.
All it means is that employees cannot demand they be provided — free — by family businesses with religious objections.
This ruling hinges on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed in 1993 to redress an earlier court ruling against Native Americans who’d used the hallucinogen peyote as part of a religious ceremony.
Ironically, that Supreme Court ruling was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, while the RFRA passed in response was supported by Sen. Harry Reid and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The law’s purpose was to give broader protections to religious freedom.
If the government wants to impose a rule that substantially burdens an American’s free exercise of religion, the law says, it not only has to have a compelling interest, it has to use the least-restrictive means possible.
By contrast, the president seems to make a habit of forcing people to pay for his preferences.
In this case, he threatened to crush anyone who objected with huge fines — running to $475 million a year for Hobby Lobby alone. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito observed that if these fines “do not amount to a substantial burden, it’s hard to see what would.”
The Hobby Lobby ruling is narrow in the sense that it applies only to family businesses and the contraceptive mandate. But make no mistake: This is a well-deserved comeuppance for a president still trying to bully the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The good news is that President Obama’s overreach seems to be achieving the opposite of what he intended, as these Supreme Court smackdowns leave our liberties more, rather than less, secure.