Last Monday the Supreme Court released its decision in the cases of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Burwell, which concerned the right of a “closely held” for-profit company to refuse to cover certain types of contraception for employees because of its owners’ religious beliefs. The Court ultimately ruled in favor of the corporations, citing religious freedom. Yet in reality the Court’s decision imposes the beliefs of corporation owners on their female employees and thereby widens inequalities between the two.
The Court ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 dictates that Hobby Lobby, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties, the two closely held, for-profit companies in question, do not have to provide employees certain forms of contraception that their owners, the Greens and the Hahns, consider abortifacients due to their Christian beliefs. In addition, the decision states that the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers provide coverage for contraception violates corporations’ religious liberty. The Court was split 5-4, with Justice Alito writing the majority opinion and Justices Ginsberg and Kagan each writing a dissenting opinion.
The Hobby Lobby decision raises troubling questions about the importance of certain Americans’ beliefs in the eyes of the law. The Court declared that closely held corporations can be considered “persons” as referred to in the RFRA and can exercise religion. Writing for the Court, Justice Alito insists that corporations themselves can exercise religion since “any suggestion that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is simply to make money flies in the face of modern corporate law.” However, the beliefs respected by this decision are the beliefs of the corporation’s owners. The implications of this decision privilege their beliefs more than the medical choices of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga’s female employees.
The prioritization of the beliefs of wealthy individuals who own part of a corporation over the beliefs of that corporation’s working class employees distorts the American ideal of equality before the law. Regardless of the religious sincerity of their beliefs, which were never in doubt, the Greens’ and the Hahns’ status as owners of a company means that their personal religious beliefs are imposed on all of their employees without consideration of their employees’ medical needs, financial status, personal preference, or mere ability to choose what type of contraception they would like. The fact that these religious beliefs contradict established medical and scientific fact stating that the contested types of birth control are not abortifacients, and that this discrepancy was not addressed in the case, further exemplifies the immense agency the Hobby Lobby decision gives to corporation owners and takes away from employees. Justice Ginsburg succinctly phrases this troubling situation in her dissent: “In the Court’s view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners’ religious faith—in these cases, thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga or dependents of persons those corporations employ.”
In essence, financial wellbeing can now decide if and how someone’s personal beliefs affect other people’s lives and choices. This somewhat crude description of the Hobby Lobby decision was not the intent of the Justices or the petitioners, who consider the issue one of religious freedom. Yet the reality of the decision and its effect on employees of closely held, for-profit corporations cannot be ignored. The socioeconomically-rooted inequality created by this decision with regards to the beliefs of employers and employees is another example of the tension between equality and liberty that has been present in American culture, government, and jurisprudence since both principles were written into our founding documents. Americans revere liberty and the ability to decide how to live their lives as they see fit, a quality which leads to suspicion of “big government” and government regulations. Yet Americans also value equality and meritocracy and have accepted a certain degree of government regulation to prevent inequality stemming from race, sex, ability, and religion. While liberty and equality are foundational tenets of the American system of law and government, Hobby Lobby exemplifies how they can conflict in equally important ways.
In declaring that the religious freedom of Hobby Lobby’s owners was violated, the Court unfortunately created further differences between the owners and employees of corporations. These differences reinforce socioeconomic inequality in prioritizing the beliefs of wealthy corporation owners over those of their female employees.
© 2024 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved.