Hobby Lobby

[glintofpewter]

My liberals consider me apostate. I think that Hobby Lobby should be allowed their policy. They don't ban all contraceptives. Employees have other choices.

 

Is there room in America for this diversity or is this like other civil rights that must be applied universally? Can you be friends, or maybe just an acquaintance with someone who enjoys a good game of golf but is a Birther who is adamant that Obama is not an American citizen?

 

Dutch

[romansh]

If the States had a national health service, should individuals within that service apply their beliefs to people they are serving?

 

Is not the employer acting as an agent on behalf of the state?

[soma]

Hobby Lobby invests 73 million dollars in companies that produce emergency contraception pills. It is the same birht control that they object to in the case of Obamacare. This is pure Christian hypocrisy.

[romansh]

I would add it the same family of lobby groups that block a more inclusive universal health care and then handcuff Obama care.

 

You apostate you Dutch.

[glintofpewter]

I think we need to make some compromises on abortion issues and for me, the Hobby Lobby case is an interesting case to explore. Unfortunately the case may not be about religious beliefs and abortion.

 

Once I open my mouth I have to read, research and ruminate.

 

Yes romansh The big picture is that the Hobby Lobby case and the up coming Little Sisters of Poor case (they don't want to fill out the form that says they will not provide birth control) will begin a series of steps that will eviscerate the Affordable Care Act.

 

The Greens re-examined the company’s health insurance policy back in 2012, shortly before filing the lawsuit. A Wall Street Journal story says they looked into their plan after being approached by an attorney from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty about possible legal action over the federal government’s contraceptives requirement.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jul/01/sally-kohn/did-hobby-lobby-once-provide-birth-control-coverag/

 

 

Based on the wikipedia entry the Becket Fund does not seem like a shill for the right.

 

If the Green family had had their wits about them and not provided emergency birth control coverage for their employees before Obamacare would we care?

 

The ACA implementation is bastard combination of private and public efforts. I don't think the employer is an agent of the State in this case. It is being asked to follow the State's law. There's a difference, right?

 

Dutch

Edited August 27, 2014 by glintofpewter

[glintofpewter]

Some research notes

 

About pension law

1. It is individual employees, not the owners of Hobby Lobby, who make the portfolio allocation decisions.

3. Those fund managers who choose the investment options can be held personally liable for ensuring that the investment options on the 401(k) menu are selected in the exclusive best interest of the participant. ... They may not sacrifice returns or take on more risk, for example, just to pursue their personal religious preferences.

4. In short, even if Hobby Lobby were to offer employees the option to invest in mutual funds that did not include contraceptive companies, it seems nearly impossible for them to avoid offering at least some funds that include them.

5. Hobby Lobby could not tell employees to invest in “contraception-free” mutual funds even if they were offered.

... we should all at least acknowledge that the Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) plan does not reflect hypocrisy so much as it reflects the company’s efforts to comply with U.S. pension law.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreybrown/2014/07/02/is-hobby-lobby-hypocritical-or-just-complying-with-u-s-pension-law/

 

 

 

In their Supreme Court complaint, Hobby Lobby's owners chronicle the many ways in which they avoid entanglements with objectionable companies. Hobby Lobby stores do not sell shot glasses, for example, and the Greens decline requests from beer distributors to back-haul beer on Hobby Lobby trucks.

Similar options exist for companies that want to practice what's sometimes called faith-based investing. ... But Hobby Lobby's managers either were not aware of these options or chose not to invest in them.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/hobby-lobby-retirement-plan-invested-emergency-contraception-and-abortion-drug-makers

Edited August 27, 2014 by glintofpewter

[glintofpewter]

When the SCOTUS decision was made public I went to the Hobby Lobby Facebook page and posted many times suggesting that they were hypocrites. I would not do that now.

[glintofpewter]

If the baker was willing to make the cake for the same-sex couple but declined to put two grooms or two brides on top of the cake would he, should he, have lost the lawsuit against him?

[romansh]

Dutch

I am not as familiar as I could be with the ins and outs of US healthcare system and all its legal vagaries. My apologies.

 

If a particular procedure is considered a bona fide medical tool then why should an employee and family be prevent from having access because of the employer's beliefs? If an employer objected to blood transfusions on religious or moral grounds would you object?

 

I find the whole thing around health care in the States a mess. So my question is would we allow every quirky belief or morality to have a veto? Presumably in the name of diversity?

 

If businesses were private organizations run for members then bakers could do what they like, so long as it is in within the laws, statutes and constitution.

 

If the business is open to the general public then I would expect them to treat people with dignity and with a reasonable degree of equality.

Edited August 28, 2014 by romansh

[SteveS55]

The Forbes article you cited is correct, Dutch. Most people who participate in an employer sponsored 401k/profit sharing plan have no idea what they are investing in. Generally, they are always families of mutual funds which invest in a variety of industry specific companies, large cap, small cap, etc. I administer the 401k/profit sharing plans for the company where I work. I meet quarterly with our investment adviser, during which time we quantitatively evaluate a fund's past performance. If they don't make the grade, they are either watch-listed, or dropped and replaced. The key word here is "quantitative" assessment, not "qualitative". There have recently been some big-time lawsuits brought against employers by participants who were not informed about investment options, or were given risky mutual funds choices. Employers do not have the option of choosing one fund over the other because they judge them to be "morally acceptable". It just doesn't happen.

 

So, that's eveyone's 401k lesson for today. If you want to know what you are invested in, look at the fund prospectus. You might even find it offends you!

 

As for the Hobby Lobby decision. The very fact that it was a privately owned, closed corporation is the main reason for the Court's decision. The fact that it is "for profit" is interesting, but didn't have any bearing on the decision. This decision, by the way, applies "only" to closed corporations, which are many times family owned and operated. The Court reasoned that in such limited cases, the small number of owners, who bear all of the financial risk and responsibilty for the company, in which employees are free to come and go as they please, should be able to call the shots as far as their religious beliefs dictate, and they had some precedent for that.

 

All and all, while not a popular decision among liberals/progressives, not a particularly bad one in terms of the Court's thinking.

 

Peace.

Steve

[glintofpewter]

I think Hobby Lobby should be allowed to continue with their current insurance policy. The craziness about the Hobby Lobby insurance is that the government would provide coverage for the morning after birth control drugs.

 

That the Little Sisters of the Poor don't want even to touch or fill out forms seems extreme to me.

 

Blood transfusions - usually the first example to challenge the policy. I think the courts are perfectly able to pick their way through this brier patch. They have done so in the past. Again this is the point of my question. Where is boundary? In what situations can religious freedoms be expressed without denying civil rights. Public corporations, retail operations must serve gays so that their civil rights are protected.

[romansh]

Regarding transfusions

 

While letting courts decide is a reasonable option, you avoided my question(s), do you think individuals have the right to deny medical insurance to their employees for procedures they disagree with on moral grounds?

[glintofpewter]

No I don't for transfusions. and it is against Fed'l law to deny them for minors. Because I think further conversation is needed about abortion and where possible the State should not flatten religious expression unless absolutely necessary and the crazy structure our ACA provides coverage separately if employees can't get it from their employer ,the Hobby Lobby case is acceptable as it was adjudicated.

.

[NORM]

My liberals consider me apostate. I think that Hobby Lobby should be allowed their policy. They don't ban all contraceptives. Employees have other choices.

 

Is there room in America for this diversity or is this like other civil rights that must be applied universally? Can you be friends, or maybe just an acquaintance with someone who enjoys a good game of golf but is a Birther who is adamant that Obama is not an American citizen?

 

Dutch

 

It's pretty clear to me that this case was and is not really about women's birth control rights. When one reads the Majority opinion (particularly Alito and Thomas), you can plainly see that the Affordable Care Act is the real target.

 

The hypocrisy I see is not between Hobby Lobby's religious views on abortion (there is nothing about the birth control in question that "causes abortions" - even the so-called morning after pill does not abort a fetus, it merely prevents ###### from completing its job in the uterus) and its investment strategy (the analysis of 401k structure is informative - Hobby Lobby probably has no clue, nor much control over what companies are invested in).

 

The hypocrisy I see is a self-proclaimed Christian company who wishes to thwart our nation from making universal health care available to "the least of those" among us.

 

I have read that Jay Sekulow, of American Center for Law and Justice, convinced Hobby Lobby to pursue this case in order to provide a new challenge to ACA.

 

NORM

[romansh]

where possible the State should not flatten religious expression unless absolutely necessary and the crazy structure our ACA provides coverage separately if employees can't get it from their employer

 

 

My experience is the judicial system is fairly logical given the axioms it works in. But one is allowed to question the axioms, don't you think?

 

Who is flattening religious expression? This to me seems a broad rhetorical statement. The Hobby lobby quite reasonably have taken a legal (and no doubt political) approach to their concerns. But are we not allow to ask, why a religious approach is allowed to over-ride what is essentially a medical issue? This is what the more secular world is asking?

Edited August 29, 2014 by romansh

[minsocal]

Other than Hobby Lobby, who knows with certainty what the owners of Hobby Lobby intend? How?

[NORM]

Other than Hobby Lobby, who knows with certainty what the owners of Hobby Lobby intend? How?

 

I think Hobby Lobby was duped into this course of action by clever tricksters. Just a hunch. They seem like nice people.

 

NORM