Vol. 78/No. 26      July 21, 2014

The court ruled 5-4 that Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, with 13,000 workers, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a 950-employee cabinet manufacturer, are exempt from providing employee health coverage for contraceptives as required by the Affordable Care Act, because company bosses say contraception runs counter to their Christian principles.

The court ruling, delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, claims the “contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion.” The decision states that it only applies to the contraceptive requirement of the Affordable Care Act and cannot be extended to deny vaccination or blood transfusions, avoid taxes or justify discrimination. The ruling did not attempt, however, to explain what it is specifically about contraception that should allow bosses to avoid paying for a legally required employee health benefit.

But many of the same justices happen to have a record of opposition to women’s rights. Justice Alito, for example, made his opposition to women’s right to abortion known in a 1985 memo: “We should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade [the 1973 decision decriminalizing abortion] and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan opposed the decision.

Ginsburg wrote a sharp dissent, calling the majority ruling a “decision of startling breadth,” challenging equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights’ separation of state and church.

At the age of 81, Ginsburg appears determined to resist all pressure for her to retire, determined to remain as the one consistent defender of the most important constitutional protections on the bench. In this case she was fully joined by Sotomayor, who often flips between upholding or disregarding the Bill of Rights and other protections against government intrusion in order to best accomplish her meritocratic intentions to get things done that are “good” for people, whether they know it or not.

“Accommodations to religious beliefs or observances, the court has clarified, must not significantly impinge on the interest of third parties,” Ginsburg wrote. The exemption “would override significant interests of the corporations’ employees and covered dependents” and “deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA would otherwise secure.”

Religious organizations exist to serve a community of believers, but companies existing to make profits do not fit that bill, Ginsburg said. “Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community,” she wrote. “Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit organizations.”

“The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield,” she concluded, saying the logic of the ruling extends to corporations of any size, public or private. “Would the exemption of the court … extend to employers with religious grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); anti-depressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)?”

What some bosses have been demanding — and the Supreme Court just granted — has nothing to do with the right to worship free of government interference protected under the U.S. Constitution.

Freedom of worship was won as a result of revolutionary struggles against feudal absolutism. Its bedrock was and remains the separation of religious institutions from the government. It strengthens the ability of workers to speak freely, organize and forge unity across religious lines. But the Hobby Lobby decision turns “freedom of religion” into “freedom” for bosses to impose their beliefs on those whose labor power they purchase.

A coming Militant issue will take up another recent Supreme Court decision curtailing “buffer zones” inside which opponents of women’s rights cannot protest outside abortion clinics. It will discuss how supporters of women’s rights can chart a fighting course to defend the gains won in Roe v. Wade and how it fits into beating back the anti-working-class, anti-women offensive by the capitalist rulers today.  
 
 
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