Written by Don Byrd
As I posted last week, the 3rd Circuit recently ruled (in Conestoga) that for-profit, secular corporations cannot exercise religion. A few weeks before that, the 10th Circuit determined exactly the opposite (in Hobby Lobby) in halting the contraception mandate for a closely-held corporation owned by a family with strong religious beliefs.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick today offers a helpful primer on the inevitable Supreme Court showdown over the religious freedom rights of corporations. Notably, she takes a step back to view this dispute in the larger context of employer-employee relationships and the difficult task of balancing interests.
Where does it stop? Why does your boss’ religious freedom allow her to curtail your own? The dangers in allowing employers to exercise a religious veto over employee health care are obvious. Can an employer deny you access to psychiatric care if he opposes it on religious grounds? To AIDS medications? To gelatin-covered pills? Constitutional protections of a single employer’s individual rights of conscience and belief become a bludgeon by which he can dictate the most intimate health decisions of his workers, whose own religious rights and constitutional freedoms become immaterial.
Religious liberty arguments have been historically advanced in defense of the rights of slaveholders, segregationists, creationism, anti-gay bigotry, and gender inequality. The religious convictions in each instance were indisputably deeply felt and fundamental. That didn’t mean they trumped everything else. As we have advanced as a society—beyond slavery, segregation, homophobia, and sexism—we have worked to accommodate religious belief while pushing for fundamental fairness and equality. It’s never been a perfect accommodation. It can’t be. But religious liberty interests are rarely the only—or even the most important—interests at play.
Read the whole thing.
