You already knew that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have First Amendment rights. Now the courts are working on giving them religion, too.
"Can a corporation exercise religion?" federal district court judge John L. Kane recently asked. He answered his own question with a provisional yes. In Newland v Sebelius, the court granted a commercial enterprise a temporary injunction exempting it, for now, from providing female employees with coverage for contraception and sterilization required by the Affordable Care Act.
The churches are already full of abstract entities with no material existence celebrated at the altar, so hey, let’s start packing the pews with them, too. In these years of declining attendance, the churches will probably welcome well-heeled worshippers, especially since letting them in also grants the churches lots of privileges.
But look where this is leading the rest of us.
Now, according to Judge Kane’s decision in Newland, secular businesses may enjoy similar status and similar immunity under federal statutes, at least, if not the Constitution. His ruling is an initial salvo in what may well be prolonged litigation, but it represents an ominous legal trend: Religious freedom is morphing into religious power. If the rights of diverse employees in a secular enterprise are subject to the beliefs of their employers, then religious people will not simply be laws unto themselves; they’ll determine, in part, laws governing the rest of us.
Religious employers are the worst employers. Now the American courts want to give them even more power to meddle in their employee’s lives…a power completely contrary to any of the principles of liberty on which this country was supposedly founded.
Mon cher PeeZee, you are buggaired !
Leave the place now and come to us, we have laws preventing this sort of thing.
Also wines and cheeses !
Corporations are people, my friend.
Ow shit. Theocracy backed by the corporate megabucks ?
I used to mock people who claimed they wanted to Emigrate.
I now begin to sympathize with that point of view.
Much like the young men in the movie Animal House, a little voice in my head keeps chiming in with “Leaving! what a good idea!”
We’re going back to standards of work abolished through the labour struggles of the early industrialised era?
It’s an awful precedent to let an employer dictate the lifestyle by which its employees must live.
The States went through this already. Why is it even being considered again? I can’t even think that that question is novel.
The question I ask those who are surprised that corporations have 1st amendment rights, is what they think the 1st amendment means by “the press,” if not the media? At the time the 1st amendment was framed, there were newspapers. Published by companies. Abstract entities. Many of the 1st amendment SCOTUS cases expanding speech rights in the 20th century have a publisher or newspaper or film distributor as the defendant. Were all those cases decided wrongly? Should the court have said, “no, those corporate entities don’t have 1st amendment rights”?
Slaves obey your masters
The goal is clear…recreate a defacto slave caste
All that I can say is “Oh fuck off, that isn’t even funny.”
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
Well, it looks like these assholes have found a way to push women out of the workforce. It really couldn’t be any clearer than if they had said, “get back in the kitchen, bitch.”
Excuse me while I go cry in a corner.
Why bother with government oppression if you can just get the government to step aside and let the corporations do the oppressing?
They’ve figured out the appropriate one-two punch for restoring despotism.
So, now imposing a corporation’s religious views on its employees is “religious freedom”.
rturpin @5:
The problem isn’t that corporations have 1st amendment rights. It’s that their rights are now considered superior to the rights of individuals.
All women (all races, sexual orientations, ability levels, etc.), plus Non-White men, GBTQI men, Disabled men. That list won’t end until there’s nothing but white dudes employed.
And maybe some of the rest of us, you know, if we agree to third and fourth class citizenship and believe the right religion.
cwilson, I might agree. There are a lot of problems.
I’m just trying to get past the canard that questions why corporations have 1st amendment rights.
Illuminata:
*continues to cry in the corner*
Let’s put this another way. Suppose the State of Texas enacted law that corporate publishers and distributors could no longer sell books advocating atheism. Would no one here see that as a 1st amendment issue, when Barnes and Noble and Amazon took the law to court? And when the courts ruled against Texas on that matter, would people complain the ruling was wrong, because it recognizes 1st amendment rights for corporations?
So why are all you atheists so ANGRY????? What’s your problem?
HR: (cheerfully) So it’s time for your annual reproductive review, mythbri.
Me: ….Don’t you mean “performance review?”
HR: No, no, of course not – what you do here at work isn’t nearly as important as what you do in the privacy of your own life, away from work and not under our purview at all.
Me: Excuse me?
HR: Oh dear. I’m going to have to start from the ground up with you, I can see. You realize that this company is Catholic, right?
Me: How can a company be Catholic? This isn’t a church I’m working for.
HR: Companies are people, sweetie, and therefore they have First Amendment rights, including freedom of religion.
Me: But don’t I have –
HR: We’re bigger than you, dear. Now, on to your reproductive review. I see that your file says that you are unmarried.
Me: So?
HR: But you have a prescription for birth control.
Me: So?
HR: So, dear, Baby Jesus cries when you fornicate. I’m afraid that I’ll have to write you up for this. We’ll meet again in three months. At that time you will have either stopped refilling your prescription, or gotten married. We’ll even let you choose who.
Me: This is ridiculous. You don’t have any right –
HR: Oh, but we do, dear. We have to tread a little carefully here – don’t want a lawsuit on our hands – but allow me to strongly imply that if you insist upon your right to privacy and insurance coverage that you work for as part of fair compensation, well… It might be that the next time you’re in this office, we’ll be having a chat about your continued employment. Isn’t religious freedom wonderful, dear? Bless your heart. ‘Bye, now.
Rturpin:
Poor analogy. Publishing books does not take freedoms away from any individual, however, forcing your employees to observe your religious faith does.
Try again.
People who never get stopped and frisked, spend jail time, or get shot by vigilantes who think they’re in the wrong neighbo—wait, where does WalMart live?
I started to write about how I do not understand how the conservatives/reactionaries could rail against the government for trying to control the individual and advocate Randian freedom from regulation for business and free enterprise and at the same time think that decisions like this are a good thing and it is OK if they want to control everyone else.
Then I remembered that they are mostly religious and in many areas of life are none rational and are capable of holding opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. They only are semi- rational and do not notice that they do not make any sense.
uncle frogy
The plus side is that many corporations already provide, and will continue to provide, real healthcare for their employees/families. These days, a majority of companies, even in very conservative areas, offer benefits to same sex couples that aren’t ‘required’ by law. I suspect this ruling, if it has any widespread affect at all, will only be on relatively small, independant businesses and franchises.
There are, of course, a bunch of obvious downsides to this turn of events, too. Many people can’t simply up and move to find a new job if their whole local area is controlled by a religious minority.
I wonder, though, if an employee came back and counter-sued based on their religious freedom…would that be enough for the courts to realize that they don’t want to go down that rebbit hole? (My fear is that the courts will continue to rule in favor of corps, regardless of ideology they (the courts) supposedly espouse).
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I wouldn’t have any problem with such a ruling. But that isn’t analogous to issue in this case. What would be analogous would be if a company told their employees that if they were caught reading a book advocating atheism, they’d be fired and the courts ruled that’s fine because the corporation’s right to religious freedom is superior to the individual’s right.
That’s the road we’re headed down.
I’ve always said that the real problem with Citizen’s United is not that corporations are legally considered people. That’s been in the law for over a century now. The real problem is that it affirmed that money = speech and the corporation’s right to keep their political “speech” (ie, money) confidential is more important than the public’s right to be informed voting citizens.
Does this mean corporations can now create churches of their religions and can become “tax exempt” like other churches?
@rturpin
Apples to oranges
Gov imposing on private citizens =/= citizens imposing on citizens
The question in your first one isn’t whether corps are people its whether the gov can impose religious views or limit free speech at will. You don’t need corps to be people (just have collective contract rights) for that case
Audrey, there are multiple issues circulating here. I’m not defending the Newland ruling. My view is that religious freedom should not be recognized for any for-profit corporation.
I’m just pointing out that there are solid reasons corporations sometimes have 1st amendment rights.
Oh look, corporations have noticed that religions have privileges/immunities/rights they don’t have and want those too.
Fuckity, fucking, fucko fuckers.
There appears to be only one solution under this evolving “corporations are people” legal regime: every citizen who is an actually a living, breathing person needs to incorporate in order to keep any rights they once enjoyed.
Newly incorporated living breathing people will of course still be second class citizens because unlike true corporations they are still mortal and can still be killed or expire of natural causes.
And this isn’t one of those solid reasons. So why insist on talking about that, instead of what this will actually do to actual people – sorry, women.
It won’t be long now before someone starts the “Church of Capitolisimo” in which the highest sacrament is corporate greed, the holy stock price is the patron saint, and so forth. Hey, if L. Ron Hubbard can do it…
Out of curiosity what does a corp do that requires the specific 1st ammendment rights and for it to be a person that doesntt apply if corps are just groups of people?
Thread won.
Seriously, if progressives and centrists don’t join together against conservatives you can expect the SCOTUS to decide which is the only real god within twelve years.
FYI, Judge Kane was nominated by Jimmy Carter. Truly history’s greatest monster.
Larry:
It would certainly make dodging taxes a hell of a lot easier.
*sigh* I wish I could say that I thought that this would change anything, but let’s face it, the big corporations don’t pay a fucking cent in taxes.
Rturpin:
Protecting the freedom of speech of an author =/= imposing religious restrictions on employees. If your agree with this, then stop flogging that dead horse
There has to be a way to “hack” this, like in Charles Stross’s Accelerando, where part-time protagonist Amber Macx sells herself into slavery to a corporation she completely owns and entirely controls, so she can get independence from her domineering mother.
Ing: the World is Dying:
So, the infamous Citizens United case was about the government banning a movie. Would you favor the government being able to limit that speech? If so, what makes it special?
I’m confused. Why the hell are we talking about free speech* when we should be talking about the devistating effects of the government allowing employers to discriminate against their employees and using religion as an excuse?
*There are other parts of the 1st Amendment, you know. Do corporations have the right to peacefully assemble? How would they even accomplish that?
What I’m saying is that I’m sick of women being shat on, but we can’t talk about it ‘cos some wanker would rather wank on about a topic that’s maybe tangentially related.
Whaddaya mean “get the government to step aside and let the corporations do the oppressing”? Corporations already do most of the oppressing, they just drag in the gov when they need something to look faintly legal.
rturpin
The fact the freedom of the press protected what may or may not have been a business enterprise which was publishing papers has nothing to do with “corporations having First Amendment rights”. That isn’t the mechanism. And corporations were far more rare (and even more distrusted) at the time.
This is really about how job providers are the privileged holders of all virtue and job holders are parasites needing strict control and regulation.
And Stevarious is right why have government do what corporations can do better and cheaper…it is the continued privatization of government functions that Republicans have always wanted.
What this stupid judge has done is to tear a hole in the veil of anonymity that separates a corporation from its owners (the shareholders).
But aha! there are two sides to every coin, and if this insane decision stands, it can be used to attack owners of corporations for the misdeeds of the corporations. What’s sauce for the goose etc.
This decision can be attacked by first ascertaining just which religion the corporation claims to adhere to, then asking (since the answer in this case is RC-ism) when the corporation was baptized, confirmed, had its first communion, and so on.
There was a vaguely analogous case in western Canada some 10-15 years ago. An Indian band set up a corporation to handle certain business affairs, then tried to persuade the judge that the corporation could also take advantage of certain legal privileges given Indians and Indian bands in Canada relating to property taxation. At first this was upheld, but on appeal struck down in no uncertain terms: the Indians were legally distinct from the corporation they owned. [Sorry to be sorta vague, but it’s been years.]
Wikipedia, as usual, has an article on the subject.
Precedent is way against this. Corporations have freedom of speech because they are really a collection of people and those people have freedom of speech. This reasoning d=sort of applies to religion, but there’s plenty of precedent that religion is not a reason to flout the law, as the local cult that was opposed to government-issued IDs found out. Yes, they didn’t have to get IDs, but they weren’t allowed to drive.
Unless a regulation can be shown to target a religion, you can’t get out of it with this reasoning. They are free to not buy contraception if they wish, but corporation or individual, this doesn’t give them the right to ignore business regulations. If they don’t like it, they can always restructure in such a way that they don’t have employees. This will get overturned on appeal.
Wow. I was thinking US would be heading this way in 50 years or so…not this soon. It is amazing to see the changes in the last 30 years…not technology, but in the power of ideology to bring us back to the 18th century.
Regardless of whether a corporation has first amendment protections, the practice of discrimination is in the same category as libel, incitement to violence, or false/misleading advertising; not considered a protected form of speech.
Yeah but it’s really tedious to have to bring in the lawyers for each individual case, over and over. This way, they can just get it all done in one blanket judgement and fire most of the lawyers.
“We hear you won’t let your female employees use birth control.”
“The company’s religion says that women aren’t allowed to use it.”
“Carry on then.”
“We hear you cut pay for all your female employees by 50%.”
“The company’s religion says that a woman is worth half that of a man.”
“Carry on.”
“We hear you won’t hire any women for management positions.”
“The company’s religion says that no woman can be in a position of authority over a man.”
“Carry on.”
“We hear you fire women when they ask for maternity leave.”
“The company’s religion says that a woman’s place is in the home..”
“Carry on.”
There’s absolutely no justification for a religious proscription against allowing your employees to use birth control that cannot be used to justify any of this other stuff. None whatsoever. All they have to do is say ‘It’s the company religion’ and there won’t even be a case to file.
I want to work for a company that belongs to the Native American Church so I can get my legal peyote.
indeed. AFAIK, “the press” back then were guys with a printing press in their basement. not large media corporations, nor large commercial outlets.
I am fascinated by the fact that so many religionists in the U.S. are fighting tooth-and-nail to protect their so-called right to deny other people’s rights. It’s a hell of a thing to fight for.
Perhaps the faithful do not realize that they are distinguishing themselves in a way that doesn’t look good to the rest of us. It’s a potential PR disaster, which is why I’m pointing it out.
Meanwhile, does anyone know if Judge Kane’s decision is available online? It might be worthwhile to see his reasoning.
scrutationaryarchivist,
This should not surprise you. Most of the religious don’t actually want religious freedom, they want to be in charge and dominate everyone else, starting with women, LGBT people, and those icky people with lots of melanin in their skin. The secular status quo was the result of a truce between those groups: they all realized that none of them held an absolute majority (required for a democratic pastiche) and sufficiently mistrusted each other to be willing to join forces to oppose any who got too powerful.
No it wasn’t. It was about whether the movie was actually a campaign ad in disguise (which it was) and whether the disclosure laws that (used to) apply to campaign ads were constitutional.
The government wasn’t trying to ban the movie. It was trying to force the distributors of the movie to reveal who funded its production.
Let me guess, someone misplaced a comma, or made this all part of one sentence, so you are not totally confused by the differences between Wallmart and CNN…
That said, two words: Snow Crash
Well, see, about 5 years ago there was this ruling, so now that part of the city is the KKK enclave, and that one is the Catholic, and that other one is owned by the mob, they now have a monopoly on the pizza business by the way, and that one over there is Scientology…
Look for a test case in which corporations have the right to cast votes on behalf of their employees, first.
In response to this, women should incorporate themselves, register their uteruses as company property, and then found a new religion where abortion is a holy sacrament. All further anti-abortion legislation will then become a violation of the First Amendment.
This is terrible news and bad law.
But it most likely shows the religions are running scared.
1. They can’t persuade people that their Invisible Sky Monster exists. Around 2 million people leave the xian religion each year and their intake of loot is down too.
On to plan B
2. They will try to impose as much of their religion on the rest of us as they can.
In the short term it might work. In the long term maybe not. People really hate to be forced to believe things they don’t actually believe.
Xians, making atheists since 33 CE.
And who then completely ignore the women who ask them “why are you derailing from the topic?”
Amphiox – an excellent idea. I wonder if its possible . . . . . .
Could a Jehovah’s Witness controlled corporation deny coverage for blood transfusions?
Employers are forbidden from asking an employee’s religion – but now prospective employees will need to inquire about the company religion.
Awww kagehi, I just refreshed and was about to mention Snow Crash but you have beat me to it.
We wouldn’t even be hearing about this if it had been a Muslim business. I suspect it would have been dismissed out of hand were that the case.
It’s like Christians just don’t understand that their faith is not the only one and that people shouldn’t be forced to live their lives in concordance with beliefs they don’t share. Oh right…they don’t.
—
Thomathy:
Company stores and company scrip returning to a town near you…
—
Illuminata:
Because it’s far more important to support corporations’ 1st Amendment rights than to worry about actual and potential harm to
womennot-quite-people? /sarcasmThe question is not whether the 1st Amendment applies to corporations. It does. But in order for this ruling to make sense, the corporation would have to be a religion, or at least be a church within a religion. It has never been the case that religious belief alone is sufficient to exempt you from generally applicable laws. It would be impossible to run a legal system that way. There are some exemptions for private membership organizations (e.g. churches) when the law in question affects the ability to determine their own membership, but there’s no way a corporation fits this description. Even non-profits run by churches don’t.
This is one of the stupidest rulings I think I’ve ever seen.
Ing: the World is Dying:
Sell a book. Again, suppose Texas wrote a law that prevented Amazon from selling books on atheism. A Texas judge enjoins Amazon from doing that. He is not enjoining any individual working for Amazon. He is not even enjoining a fixed set of individuals, since Amazon’s employees and shareholders vary over time. Nor did any individual sell the objectionable book. The money on the sale goes to Amazon, as a corporation. If the courts seize corporate assets, they belong to Amazon, as a corporation. If the 1st amendment protects Amazon’s freedom to sell books, then Amazon enjoys 1st amendment rights.
Ace of Sevens:
Nope. The 1st amendment explicitly protects freedom “of the press.” And the founders made it clear that newspapers and book publishers were part of the press. And those included businesses.
Hey, rturpin:
I gave you three chances to prove you’re not a douche. Looks like you struck out.
So how’s about you shut the fuck up and stop derailing? We’re not talking about book publishers in Texas, we’re talking about coporations using religion as an excuse to limit access women have to safe, legal, and necessary medications and medical procedures.
Are you arguing that corporations have the right to discriminate based on the First Amendment? If not, feel free to stop wanking in public at any time now.
As stupid as the notion that a corporation can have religious beliefs is (and they might want to ask Chick-Fil-A head Dan Cathy about that, even he disagrees with that notion), I don’t see how it’s even an issue here. Health insurance is part of an employees compensation, and an employer has no right to tell an employee how they use their compensation, whether it come in the form of a paycheck or a health insurance card. Limitation on health coverage should be based on sound, scientific, medical information, not on religious beliefs.
Many churches are corporations, as well. I predict that someone will attempt to apply the Citizens United case to a church corporation (503c) and it will be coupled with the nearly unenforced IRS rules against such corporations endorsing candidates or laws. Add to this the current efforts in many state legislatures to enact laws exempting individuals from various laws on “religious” grounds, which could then be applied to corporations, and you will have churches becoming lawless enclaves.
Those who think this seems a little paranoid haven’t read enough history. Not only is this possible, it is exactly what many religious leaders are working towards.
Gus:
Since you brought up insurance companies, I have to wonder how they feel about this. I mean, it’s much more cost effective for them to provide birth control to their customers than to pay for a whole bunch of unwanted pregnancies. If I were them, I’d be pissed about the religious zealots trying to tell me what I can and can’t cover.
WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE INSURANCE EXECS!? *sob!*
Ah, but Scalia says that that is somehow not a constitutionally protected religious freedom.
Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990)
This whole debate about whether corporations have first amendment rights has sort of been overtaken by that false dichotomy. They do have and have always had rights that we accord to natural* persons. Corporations can own property, for instance. The debate is about what rights we as a society think they should have. To anyone not sipping the godkoolaid, it’s clear that religious freedoms are rights that corporations should not have. It’s pretty sad that this is a real issue.
*as opposed to corporate persons
*cries in corner*
That’s patently untrue. I’ve never heard of “fixed set of individuals” being a requirement for a plaintiff in a First Amendment lawsuit. A CEO could bring the lawsuit, and bam, individual. Anyway, that’s not the frackin’ point. Corporations are persons for some purposes, including freedom of the press. You’re not making a cogent point.
Sidenote, Audley, if you’d prefer I ignore the derailing, I will desist.
Nah, Portia, I think your point that corporations have some rights is one that needs to be hammered home.
Wich leaves us with the most important question: Does a corporation have a soul, so it can go to heaven?
For instance, your point that corporations have limited rights dovetails quite nicely with the point that corporations can’t discriminate against whole classes of people. Or that they can’t dictate what their employees do with their compensation. Etc.
portia:
That’s my point. That corporations get treated as entities in the legal system separate from any fixed set of individuals, and that who their shareholders, management, and employers are may vary over the course of a single case involving the corporation.
Hey, Audley, some of us are capable of following multiple issues and lines of thought.
@revwubby – You’re scaring me.
I want to have a corporation so I can marry with it.
Hey, R, you’re a derailing asshole.
The problem, rturpin, is that this sort of derailing tends to be especially common when the discussion is of issues that predominantly affect women.
Stuff your pugnacious condescension.
And your derail wouldn’t matter so much if we didn’t see this shit happen every single goddamn time an issue that effects women comes up. Anything but talk about what would be right for women, huh?
rturpin:
Nothing you’ve said has addressed the fact that corporations
1. have some rights and not others. (See: 71 re: marriage). And that’s how it should be.
2. their “separateness” (i.e. their status as an abstract creation of the state) does not mean they should have more or less rights we deem pragmatically necessary and useful.
I fail to understand why you think your example of the Texas bookseller should mean we should be just fine with this ruling. Some things, it makes sense for corporations to be able to do. (Own property) Other things, it does not. (Vote, marry, worship according to sincerely held religious beliefs).
This is just another reason I find capitalism to be a disgusting system.
Why the hell were corporations ever given person-hood status in the first place? That just seems like a really obviously bad idea.
There’s high economic utility in allowing corporations to perform certain functions, which they can only do if they have some of the rights of persons. Like, owning property.
Today the owner of the company I work at is Catholic – so he can prevent me from having health insurance that covers contraception and abortion.
Tomorrow he might be a Jehovah’s Witness – and prevent me from having health insurance that covers any operation that might require blood transfusions.
The next day he might be a born-again literalist – and prevent me from having health insurance that covers digestive problems to do with eating shellfish – because I wasn’t supposed to be eating shrimp anyway.
What about all the poor pacifist corporations who have to support military action due to laws protecting members of the armed forces? Will no one think of them?
Portia #78
Simply because corporations need to have certain rights also held by persons in order to function is no reason to define them as a person. Rather, the rights they need can and should be explicitly defined by a separate set of laws, stating that, e.g. for the purposes of owning this class of property, the corporation is treated as a person/single entity.
I think that the solution of corporate rights and privileges could be sorted out by declaring that they have no constitutional rights and only the rights given them by law…then make sure the repubs ain’t makin that laws.
That or just incorporate yourself — it is easy: Legalzoom
-Incorporate yourself lots of times and make all that voter ID a thing of the past; vote as many times as you afford. Corporations can’t marry but they can merge. Snowcrash shows that corps could be armed…I miss you B782! The only real problem will be apportioning votes: 3/5 for slaves, 1 for individuals, and number of shareholders for corporations. How could that not be fair?
Hence my distinction between corporate persons and natural persons. Your characterization is descriptive of the current state of the law.
This is like ominous sci fi. Atwood save us…
And next, religious landlords’ “rights.” My landlord already thinks I’m a Satanist, b/c I have a Hindu doll hanging in the tree outside.
Can multi-nationals be multi-denominational?
Will Catholic Coke suffer sales drops in Turkey?
Will Protestantism be the taste of the new generation?
(The Cola-wars could get very nasty, now)
If corporations are people, why can’t people be corporations?
OK, so the corporations are getting annoyed because they see that churches have perks and rights that they don’t.
There are two possible ways to alleviate this imbalance. This action seems to be heading towards giving corporations the perks and rights that churches have, which is clearly going to cause problems. If only there were some other way to level the playing field…
So, help a naive Brit understand…
It sounds like it boils down to this: If my boss decides that his [company’s] religious belief preclude the wearing of hats, he can legally prevent me from wearing a safety helmet on his construction sites and the US law machine will uphold it?
If my boss decides that his [company’s] religious belief preclude the wearing of hats, he can legally prevent me from wearing a safety helmet on his construction sites and the US law machine will uphold it?
That’s my understanding of the law and ruling as it stands. Keep in mind that IANAL.
Things like this make me wonder if there isn’t really a sinister conspiracy to keep the recession going out there somewhere. If the economy were better and unemployment were lower, would anyone work for a company that didn’t provide them with basic safety equipment, like the helmet in this theoretical example or birth control in the real life example? Surely most people would simply not work for employers who imposed their religion on their workers. But with unemployment high, workers are so happy to have a job, any job, they will put up with this sort of crap…Which is why I don’t think the Kochs et al want the boom of the 1990s back.
portia:
I thought I had made it pretty clear I agreed with that. What I’ve been pointing out is that it’s no mystery how they get some 1st amendment rights, to wit, “the press” is explicitly referenced there. So when one begins a discussion of corporations having rights with the notion that this began with Citizens United, as PZ did, it tends to confuse things. They’ve always been there, including in a lot of 1st amendment case law. In my view, the strong legal path for not treating corporations like people is to point out how they get the rights they do have. Not as some general assumption that they should always be treated like natural persons except where that makes no sense. But rather, as an argument relevant to corporations. And that’s easy to do with the 1st amendment, which protects “the press.”
So it seems we agree. There’s a chance I was being dense before, but there’s also the fact that you were doing what Audley pointed out, derailing. Your point about framing the discussion got rather lost in your counter-examples. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with saying “It’s ridiculous in this situation to grant a corporate person the rights of a natural person, because it’s so harmful to women*!” As far as I can tell saying “It’s ridiculous to treat a corporate person as a natural person all the time” (which is what I read you as saying) is distracting from the point of the OP. And it detracts from the focus on the impact this decision has on women. Does that make sense?
*and other people with a uterus.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But only if your employers anti-hat religion has a powerful lobby and lots of societal privilege. And lots of voters. : p Otherwise, probably not so much (see: Employment Division v. Smith)
I can’t think of what to write to this, except that I really hope this backfires against the people who floated the idea in the first place.
…and people wonder why I call for an international, secular economic secession.
I’ve seen this before, take credit it it was/is yours:
“I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
40 Ace of Sevens
Unfortunately the injunction is based not on the constitution or 1st amendment but on a law: “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” (Now There’s an supreme exercise is the majority claiming persecution). According to the reasoning the judge used, an employer can not be compelled to do something against his religion unless the government can demonstrate a “compelling interest” for that regulation. Whether or not a law or reg “targets” a given religion no longer enters into the matter.
This turns the principle you mentioned on its head. We can hope it will get overturned on appeal. But given the decades of right-wing religious take-over of the courts (they made no attempt to conceal that this is their strategy since the Reagan administration) I’m not so sure.
55 kantalope
Oh I hope so. Can you say “Hoist on your own petard?” Letting the condition of rights and healthcare get that stupid could do wonders for discrediting the whole theocratic idiocy we’re talking about.
This is why we need(ed) the public option.
If we had the public option then the provision of health insurance could be severed from one’s employment and therefore this case would never have come up. No more whining about forcing an employer to do something against their religion.