Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
Unless you have been in a coma the last few weeks, you have probably heard of or read about the Hobby Lobby case recently argued in front of the United States Supreme Court. Hobby Lobby is challenging a section of the Affordable Care Act that requires companies to provide medical insurance for their employees or pay a fine. The mandate also requires the insurance to include coverage for contraception services. Services that its owners claim violates their religious beliefs.
“…. the battle for its Christian identity was revived this week when lawyers for the company argued before the Supreme Court that the company should not have to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. The issue, says Hobby Lobby co-founder Barbara Green, isn’t that the company wants to meddle with women’s rights to take contraceptive drugs. “We’re not trying to control that,” she said. “We’re just trying to control our participation in it.” ‘ Reader Supported News
Mrs. Green claims they are not trying to control their female employees use of contraceptives, but the network of causes that they are involved with seem to indicate that the Greens want to mix their religious views into everyone else’s business.
When you dig a little deeper, the facts indicate that the donations made by the Green family and their related businesses and executives, display an attempt to force their religious beliefs on others.
“But a document published here for the first time reveals Hobby Lobby appears to be going much further than protecting freedom, providing funding for a group that backs a political network of activist groups deeply engaged in pushing a Christian agenda into American law. The document shows entities related to the company to be two of the largest donors to the organization funding a right-wing Christian agenda, investing tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars into a vast network of organizations working in concert to advance an agenda that would allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians and deny their employees contraceptives under a maximalist interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution.
That network of activist groups has succeeded in passing legislation in Arizona requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion, banning taxpayer-funded insurance paying for government employees’ abortions, defining marriage as a union between a man and woman, and funding abstinence education. And there’s evidence that its efforts go well beyond the borders of the Copper State.” Reader Supported News
The above efforts by Hobby Lobby and its owners seems to conflict with Mrs. Greens claim that they are not trying to meddle with women’s right to use contraceptives. Just how deeply is Hobby Lobby involved in these organizations funding and assisting with these efforts to restrict other citizens of their freedoms?
“Hobby Lobby-related entities are some of the biggest sources of funding to the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which backed groups that collaborated in promoting the anti-gay legislation in Arizona – recently vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer – that critics say would have legalized discrimination against gays and lesbians by businesses.
The path of SB 1062 to the Arizona statehouse was built by two groups, the Center for Arizona Policy and the Alliance Defending Freedom. Center for Arizona Policy employees regularly spoke in favor of the legislation, appearing as the grass-roots face of a bill that the center’s president, Cathi Herrod, characterized as “[making] certain that governmental laws cannot force people to violate their faith unless it has a compelling governmental interest–a balancing of interests that has been in federal law since 1993,” according to a statement on the group’s website. (One hundred and twenty-three Center for Arizona Policy-supported measures have been signed into law; its legislative agenda ranges from requiring intrusive ultrasounds for women seeking abortions to HB 2281, a bill that, if passed by the Arizona Senate, would exempt religious institutions from paying property taxes on leased or rented property.)
For its part, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national Christian organization based in Arizona, works toward the “spread of the Gospel by transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family,” according to the group’s website. Both groups are heavily funded by the National Christian Charitable Foundation, “the largest Christian grant-making foundation in the world,” as described on the group’s website. And who is the largest funder of National Christian Charitable? That would be a Hobby Lobby executive.” Reader Supported News
It would appear to this reader that Hobby Lobby does quite a bit more than just look after protecting what it considers its own religious rights. Their donations and efforts are geared toward making their religious beliefs the law of the land. They seem to think the Free Exercise Clause allows them to dictate how other people have to exercise their lives. Just how much money has Hobby Lobby and its executives donated to the cause of transforming the legal system?
“In 2011, the National Christian Charitable Foundation contributed $9,606,281.88 of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s $36,379,373 grant revenue. That same year, the NCF contributed $236,250 of the Center for Arizona Policy’s $1,662,355 in grant revenue.
Overall, from 2002 to 2011 the NCF contributed $1,481,343 to the Center for Arizona Policy and $31,024,584.30 to the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Typically the trail would stop there. The National Christian Charitable Foundation appears to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, single contributor to the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Center for Arizona Policy, but because the foundation is a massive-donor advised fund, its donors are shielded from public scrutiny.
However, a 2009 NCF tax filing, reported here for the first time, offers insights into the deep pockets backing National Christian Charitable Foundation.
The form, viewable here, shows a total of nearly $65 million in contributions coming from a combination of Jon Cargill, who is the CFO of Hobby Lobby, and “Craft Etc.,” an apparent misspelling of Crafts Etc., a Hobby Lobby affiliate company. The document shows that Hobby Lobby‑related contributions were the single largest source of tax-deductible donations to National Christian Charitable’s approximately $383.785 million in 2009 grant revenue.
According to addresses on the filing, both the contributions from Crafts Etc. and Jon Cargill came from a massive warehouse and office facility housing Hobby Lobby’s headquarters in Oklahoma City.” Reader Supported News
Notwithstanding Mrs. Greens earlier claims, Hobby Lobby seems to be deeply involved in the business of pushing their religious beliefs upon their employees and upon citizens in many states where laws have been introduced or passed at the behest of the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Center for Arizona Policy and the National Christian Charitable Foundation. I wonder how Hobby Lobby would react if another business sued for the ability to subtract a percentage of its taxes on the grounds that their religion does not allow their tax money to be spent on any military expenses?
Is Hobby Lobby fibbing when they claim that they are merely trying to protect their own religious beliefs when they are sending millions of dollars to causes intent on making their religious beliefs the law of the land? Hobby Lobby buys millions of products from China and other countries that have a variety of policies and laws that a good Christian would not agree with or which might violate their religious beliefs. Shouldn’t Hobby Lobby boycott those countries products that are produced under slave like conditions, or in countries that have forced abortion laws?
What do you think?
“The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.”
There are many ways in which basic health care can be improved without depending on charitable institutions, or having the government run it in its typical bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic way.
Acknowledging that most of us share the common ground of wanting to improve health care for all can go a long way to remove the bitterness from debate.
Hi Mike:
You can follow my Forbes link in my 12:14 PM post for a state analysis which is not anecdotal.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimblasingame/2013/10/01/why-obamacare-is-unpopular-with-small-business-owners/
Nick:
I don’t know whether there are more losers than winners under the ACA. All that I have heard to date has been anecdotal. However, my views on health care have been admittedly influenced by Kant, Lock, Rawls, the Jesuit intellectual tradition and Catholic social doctrine. Consequently, I early on arrived at the opinion that basic health care is a fundamental human right that cannot be met solely by charitable institutions and has not been met by the health insurance industry. That then raises the question of governmental involvement, which leads in turn to vigorous and sometimes hostile debate.
One more problem that I have neglected to add is that for middle class families who are close to the subsidy cutoff, there is an incentive to cut back on their income in order to qualify. It is troubling to think of middle class families cutting back on their income, or poorer families choosing not to ascend the ladder of success for fear of begin worse off without subsidies.
Mike A – and best wishes for your wife’s and your own health.
Hi Mike A:
You are so lucky to be one of those who have not had a negative impact. Do you have individual or employer insurance. If you have an individual policy, is it an Exchange policy?
On average, premiums increase markedly, so there will be some whose premiums stay similar or even go down with subsidies, and those whose premiums skyrocket for that average effect.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/04/49-state-analysis-obamacare-to-increase-individual-market-premiums-by-avg-of-41-subsidies-flow-to-elderly/
HIPAA provided some protection for pre-existing conditions:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_hipaa.html
Basically, the cost of health care has grown to the point that we don’t use insurance as strictly insurance. We don’t have a totaled car towed to an insurance company and say we need a new insurance policy, and could it please pay for this accident we got in yesterday? We can only afford the cost of premiums, deductibles, and copays for medical conditions. Without the help on an insurance company, most of us cannot pay for health care for most conditions.
One problem is that it takes pharmaceutical companies and biotech years to push a drug through an FDA trial, and most drugs fail before they ever get to the investigational new drug stage. They only have a 6 year patent to recoup their costs, as well as the costs for all of their failures. So they try to squeeze as much profit as they can before the generics can take over, which will be preferred by most insurance plans. Addressing the very real problems with the insurance industry is just one aspect of what’s wrong with health care. We also need to bring down the actual cost of care. And there are so many innovative ways we can do this.
davidm:
I can agree that one may not have a moral duty to obey an unjust law. But one does have a duty to accept the legal consequences of the failure to comply with an unjust law. in addition, I do not regard John Rawls as the “darling philosopher” of liberals. But I did have the privilege of studying under him and found him to be not only deeply committed to a just and moral social order, but profoundly humane as well.
MikeA, There were certainly winners and losers, as there always are when the government gets involved w/ anything. The problem as I see it is there are many more losers. And, the losers are in great part, the people who run small businesses. Being a small biz owner, we are keenly aware that we get the short straw EVERY TIME.
Karen S:
I have no idea what we will know about the ACA once we are able to gather some statistical evidence of its effects. Clearly it has been detrimental in your situation. In my case, I was paying approximately $20,000.00 per year for coverage for two adults with a $5,000.00 deductible. I kept my policy, the premiums did not increase beyond what I had previously experienced and in each of the past two years I have received a premium rebate of more than $1,000.00 under the 80% rule. But prior to the ACA I could never have changed companies under any circumstances because I have had heart surgery and my wife has Crohn’s.
As stated previously, anyone w/ a rudimentary understanding of finances knows the mutual fund “gotcha game.” It’s played by both sides. Michael Moore blasted Halliburton while being invested in it. The game is lame when either side plays it.
Sorry – “whom the law will affect.” I cannot write without spell and grammar-check.
Hi Elaine:
I believe the “but what about you argument” has already been addressed above. You might have missed it – this is a long thread. (My latest post on this topic was at 5:05PM, if that helps. You might disagree with me.)
Mike A – I believe that the 3 options that you outlined apply in all cases. If I feel that this law harms people such as myself (ACA is incompatible with the rights of all the people whose insurance was cancelled, premiums and/or deductibles rose until they were unaffordable, lost their doctors, and replaced with insurance that denies them access to doctors and hospitals, drugs not covered on tight formularies and do not count towards max out of pocket caps), or if someone at HL or elsewhere believes that it is a legal but unjust law, then we all still only have 3 options. Obey the law while working to repeal it, civil disobedience and face the fines, or litigate.
In all of these options, critics will have to prove their case, either in the court of public opinion for the goal of appeal, or in a court of law.
I clearly recall that the ACA was strongly marketed as a means to provide quality health care for the poor, and reduce the cost of health care to the middle class. Who wouldn’t want that? Remember when families were going to save $2400 a year? Help the poor AND save money! It’s been demonstrated that this was not the result, however, and that the authors knew premiums would markedly rise on average for the middle class. I believe that there are some who hold on to the intentions of their support, providing health care to the poor, without realizing the implications of the result.
Most people do want to help the poor access quality health care, and help the middle class afford health care. To those of us experiencing Obamacare now, this is clearly a law that does more harm than good. Sometimes things only become clear when it affects people personally, which will happen to millions more people when the employer mandate hits. I ask every person who supports Obamacare to imagine, for a moment, if their premiums increased by thousands of dollars a year, their deductibles increased by many thousands of dollars, their doctor choice decreased, their covered drugs decreased, their out of pocket cost for off formulary drugs did not count towards max caps. Suddenly the insurance policy they liked and rarely thought about was gone, and replaced by stress about finances and getting care. Now imagine you’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness on top of it. You are now experiencing the stress that you wanted to save other people, but they can’t find doctors, either. Would you still support it then, when it happens to you? This is not an emotional exercise. It is applying the same result on yourself that has already been applied on others. Because sometimes it’s easier to ignore consequences born by others. And that is key when crafting legislation or considering repeal; empathizing with the people who the law will affect.
Hobby Lobby’s Hypocrisy: The Company’s Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/hobby-lobby-retirement-plan-invested-emergency-contraception-and-abortion-drug-makers
Excerpt:
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. To avoid supporting companies that manufacture abortion drugs—or products such as alcohol or pornography—religious investors can turn to a cottage industry of mutual funds that screen out stocks that religious people might consider morally objectionable. The Timothy Plan and the Ave Maria Fund, for example, screen for companies that manufacture abortion drugs, support Planned Parenthood, or engage in embryonic stem cell research. Dan Hardt, a Kentucky financial planner who specializes in faith-based investing, says the performances of these funds are about the same as if they had not been screened. But Hobby Lobby’s managers either were not aware of these options or chose not to invest in them.
The Hobby Lobby case is all about power, not religious liberty
This is another skirmish in the battle to define morality
By Elizabeth Stoker | April 1, 2014
http://theweek.com/article/index/259042/the-hobby-lobby-case-is-all-about-power-not-religious-liberty
davidm:
I have read your response several times and I am somewhat confused about what you intend to say. In addition, I do not believe that you are correctly interpreting Rawls’ theories.
A law is legitimate when it has been adopted in accordance with the procedures required under a constitutional framework. In other words, legitimacy is a product of the legitimacy of the process of enactment. When we say that a law is legitimate, we mean only that the state may enforce compliance with its requirements. Whether a particular legislative enactment is a just law is a different question.
Jim Crow laws were legitimate, but unjust. They were eliminated through a combined process of moral witness (through civil disobedience), judicial intervention (through constitutional challenges) and legislation (through the development of a political consensus). Socrates drank the hemlock out of respect for the legal institutions of Athens. King submitted to arrest and imprisonment out of respect for the rule of law in this country.
You frequently make reference to natural law in your comments, but you never define it. Natural law is not a monolithic concept. I gather from your statements that your theory of natural law is scholastic. It is certainly not Rawlsian. The notion that a law which violates the dictates of one’s conscience is null and void is a libertarian bastardization of Aquinas. Moreover, Aquinas’ views of natural law were derived from his understanding of reason informed by revelation. Needless to say, revelation is a religious concept and its meaning is a matter of serious disagreement in a pluralistic society.
Moreover, your reference to Rawls’ First Principle of Justice omits the second half, which is that the bundle of rights held by an individual must be compatible with the rights of other individuals. That is another way of saying that no man is an island. Rawls, after all, was a social contractarian.
Finally, Rawls’ First Principle cannot be isolated from his Second Principle, which invokes, inter alia, the idea of the difference principle. The goal of universal health care is a worthy example of justice as fairness. It is also reflective of Locke’s theory of the social contract, in which he posited not only rights to life, liberty and property, but to health as well.
Mike A –
My intention in mentioning “A Theory of Justice” was not to dig into a debate upon the merits of John Rawls philosophy of law, nor to bolster support for Natural Law Theory. Rather, my point was that even a darling legal philosopher of liberals recognizes the concept of liberty of conscience and includes it in his First Principle of Justice. John Rawls actually comes from a positivist background which has very different ideas about the basis of one’s obligation to obey civil law than Natural Law Theory does.
You use the word “legitimate” but my concern is more about the moral basis for one’s obligation to obey the law. You say that the Jim Crow laws were legitimate but unjust. My question is, does a person have a moral obligation to obey a Jim Crow law? As a positivist, you would probably say yes, because the law was duly enacted. As a Natural Law proponent, I would say no. I have no obligation to obey a Jim Crow law because it is unjust.
Hopefully I will share more later. I have other obligations pressing upon my time right now.
Mike Appleton wrote: “You frequently make reference to natural law in your comments, but you never define it. Natural law is not a monolithic concept. I gather from your statements that your theory of natural law is scholastic.”
I have mentioned in the past that my inspiration into Natural Law Theory came from the post-scholastic period, from writers like John Locke, William Blackstone, and the still living John Finnis. William Blackstone has probably inspired me the most. I have more difficulty finding close agreement with writers like Hobbes and Aquinas, but they nonetheless provide useful reading.
Mike Appleton wrote: “The notion that a law which violates the dictates of one’s conscience is null and void is a libertarian bastardization of Aquinas. Moreover, Aquinas’ views of natural law were derived from his understanding of reason informed by revelation. Needless to say, revelation is a religious concept and its meaning is a matter of serious disagreement in a pluralistic society.”
Well what do you expect from a Dominican priest? He basically sought to merge Greek writings and Hebrew writings into one common system under God Almighty. Aquinas is by no means the univocal authority of Natural Law Theory. I think Justice William Blackstone better articulates the relationship between Natural Law, Revealed Law, and the Law of Nations. Blackstone took a reductionistic approach that I have found much more enlightening than the holistic approach of Aquinas. Blackstone points out that Natural Law was antecedent to Revealed Law, so Natural Law is not, as you describe, an understanding informed by revelation.
My thinking is that Revealed Law came because mankind failed to discover the laws of nature adequately. I see Revealed Law and Natural Law as independent of each other, but parallel in the sense that Revealed Law is a subset of Natural Law and neither contradicts the other when properly understood using rational thought.
Ideally, the laws of nations should be such that they are in accord with natural law. If the laws of nations violate natural law, they are not valid law. This concept is not a “bastardization” of Aquinas. Rather, it is a more modern concept derived from Common Law, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, early Supreme Court decisions, and even an encyclopedia of United States law published by West known as “American Jurisprudence.”
“The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed … An unconstitutional law is void.” (16 Am. Jur. 2d, Sec. 178)
When the Supreme Court rules a law “unconstitutional,” it is basically declaring that law not to be law. It is in reality “no law.” The effect is as if the law had never been passed in the first place, as if it had never existed. Such a viewpoint is firmly entrenched in the concept of Natural Law. It is a continuation of the notion that civil laws are to be discovered by lawyers from nature in the same way that scientists discover the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, etc. from the study of nature.
What you refer to as a legitimate law being one that is duly enacted is simply a law that has the presumption of being valid law based upon the procedures used to put it into place. However, according to Natural Law Theory, that law is only law if it is truly a law properly discovered from nature to be that which leads to man’s felicity.
In application to Jim Crow laws, I say that the Jim Crow laws were not laws at all. Just because they were duly enacted according to the proper procedures did not give them any authority or moral power or make them true law. They had the presumption of law because of the procedures that put them into place, but they were illegitimate in the sense that they were not derived from natural law. They had no authority at all, and nobody was morally obligated to obey them at any time. The police who attempted to enforce them through violent means were the real lawbreakers. If they tried to do that today, the police would be the ones put in jail. That’s how I see it.
Mike Appleton wrote: “The goal of universal health care is a worthy example of justice as fairness. It is also reflective of Locke’s theory of the social contract, in which he posited not only rights to life, liberty and property, but to health as well.”
I don’t think anybody disagrees about the “goal” of good health for everyone. The problem is when a particular segment of society forces their perspective of how to have good health upon everyone else. One person might think good health comes from working out in the gym with weights and running 5 miles every morning. Another person might think riding a bicycle 20 miles every day results in good health. Another person might think eating vegetarian is the way, while another believes eating meat is the way. Then there are those who think drug prescriptions from medical doctors is the path to good health. Others think medical doctors hinder health rather than help it with all their unnatural interventions. They would no more go to a medical doctor for health care than you would go to a shaman.
I had an interesting conversation about Obamacare this morning as I drove into the office. I gave a woman a ride to her job at a local hotel. I noticed a nasty wound on her cheek and asked her about it. She indicated that she was going to get it checked out. I said something about how at least we have Obamacare now to help you out. She got a little upset and said Obamacare hasn’t done anything for her. She said they wanted $145 per month for her to get Obamacare. She said the county health clinic is the one that actually helps her. They work with her and have always been there for her health needs. I expressed surprise that the Obamacare subsidy for her was not enough to cover her for free. I asked her if she knew how much her Obamacare fine was going to be. She said she was not going to be fined because her income is below the poverty level.
This experience reinforced my previous perspective that local county health departments are the best way to deliver quality healthcare to the poor. It is a tried and true method. This new step of Obamacare is an unnecessary legal step that ultimately will harm a lot of people.
anon – who is RushBo? that will tell us if it was an ad hominem attack.
Just to clarify, Annie is right that there is some hypocrisy there. But if they changed their mutual fund allocations in preparation for the trial, they will be criticized for being disingenuous. So far, it just seems like a mild non-issue in the greater scheme of trying to balance religious tolerance with individual rights, and what constitutes health care standards.
On the one hand, HL might want to consider divesting itself of stocks in companies with which they take issue. On the other hand, “but what about you” is a common means to try to block debate. For example, does someone have to right to protest offshore drilling if he has a 401K up to its neck in oil and gas? Can a father never demand that something be done about cars speeding by his child’s school if he got a speeding ticket once in a school zone?
Too often, we try to find ways to say, in essence, someone does not have a right to express an opinion, instead of addressing the opinion itself. Because now instead of addressing how responsive Congress needs to be to religious freedom when they craft new laws, or what the legal chances are of challenging laws under religious objection, we now have many people and media outlets saying HL has no right to fight for an opinion because of hypocritical 401K investments. We can cut down just about everyone with the same argument – Michael Moore shouldn’t condemn the rich because he is rich, Warren Buffet says the rich should be taxed more but doesn’t pay all his taxes . . . To a degree we all live in glass houses and could all be silenced in a public forum.
But sometimes we do have a Leland Yee, who pushes gun control while gun running himself. Did Hobby Lobby never look into the “day after pill” until the ACA came about, and then researched it? Did they divest in 2012? Did they know they were invested in pharmaceutical companies (an extremely common investment) but considered it investing in medical research to help people, without investigating every company and what it produced? Or were they publicly against the morning after pill while privately running an abortion clinic on the premises? There is a wide range of possibilities here. Simply being ignorant of what their mutual funds invested in, or never thinking about the implications, just does not sound too scandalous to me. Believe me, I’ve heard of much worse behavior from politicians of any party.
Michael Moore criticized Halliburton while he had mutual funds w/ Halliburton stock. It’s an old “gotcha” game played by both sides. And, as you know Paul, have some knowledge of finance, NOBOBY knows all the holdings in a mutual fund and THEY CHANGE DAILY.
Paul, if one has a case being heard in front of the US Supreme Court that wants to deny their employees the three methods of birth control that a company they invest in makes, it would behoove them to do their homework, be squeaky clean and try their damndest to not make themselves appear less than sincere, nay hypocritical.
annie – surprisingly enough the attorneys for the government did not raise this issue. I am not sure what can be raised at the SCOTUS level that was not at the trial level, you would have to check with rafflaw and our attorney group. We did find out via the government that Obamacare could require Hobby Lobby to pay for an elective abortion.
And technically, I think Hobby Lobby invests in a mutual fund which invests in those companies, which also make a lot of other drugs. That mutual fund can divest itself of those stocks if they do not have a great enough return. Happens all the time. Elaine is a former teacher so she should be getting state retirement. She will be drawing from a mutual fund. Ask her who they are invested with. She will have no better answer then I will have about mine. 🙂