Source: https://ordinary-times.com/2014/04/15/sibelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc-et-al-part-iv-the-governments-showing/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:39:36+00:00

Document:
A description of the Ordinary Court project may be read here. Part I of the opinion may be read here. Part II of the opinion may be read here. Part III of the opinion may be read here. Kowal, J.’s partial dissent and partial concurrence may be read here.
Thompson, J. delivered the opinion of the Ordinary Court as to this Part IV.
Because I find that the Greens have a right to challenge the mandate’s application to their businesses, I must also reach the question of whether the mandate constitutes a “substantial burden” on their free exercise rights, and whether the Government has asserted a compelling interest under RFRA for infringing the Greens’ free exercise rights. The burden seems unquestionably substantial, as the Government seeks to compel the Greens to choose between their religion and their business and, most importantly, seeks to compel them to directly engage in activity that violates their conscience.
As to whether the Government possesses a compelling interest, the Government has made the Court’s job quite easy. Under RFRA, the Government must demonstrate that the “application of the burden to the person (1) is in furtherance of a compelling government interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling interest.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1 (emphasis added). By its terms, then, RFRA requires that the Government show not merely that it possesses a compelling interest for the policy, but that it possesses a compelling interest for applying the policy against the specific Plaintiff seeking relief.
Here, although the Government has asserted generally why it believes there is a compelling interest for the mandate itself, it does not appear to have even attempted to explain why it has a compelling interest in applying the mandate to the Greens specifically. While there may be circumstances in which such a generalized approach would be acceptable even under RFRA, it is an approach that is worthy of consideration only insofar as the Government seeks to apply the regulation at issue uniformly. Here, the Government has not chosen to apply its regulation uniformly, but has instead exempted a large number of employers from the mandate. In such a circumstance, it must present evidence why it possesses a compelling interest for declining to make those exemptions available to the Greens.
Although it is certainly conceivable that the Government could produce evidence to demonstrate that it has a compelling interest in this particular application of the mandate at trial, this case is before the Court on a preliminary injunction, and the Greens need only show a likelihood that they will prevail at trial. As the Government has, at this stage, made no attempt to show why it has a compelling interest in applying the mandate to the Greens specifically, this is a standard that the Greens are able to meet almost by default.
Thompson, J., was joined in this part IV of the opinion of the Ordinary Court by Kowal, J. and Dave, J. Kowal, J. is further of the opinion that his dissent from part II applies with equal force as to this part IV.
As described in my dissent from Part III of the Court’s opinion, none of the Respondents have articulated claims which confer an intrusion upon their right of free religious exercise under RFRA. Hobby Lobby has no religious beliefs with which to interfere, and the Greens have not been asked, as individuals, to do or refrain from doing anything at all.
What the Contraception Mandate requires is that Hobby Lobby comply with a law to which the Respondents have articulated a mere “generalized grievance.” This is insufficient to bestow standing on any Respondent. Hollingsworth v. Perry, __ U.S. ___, 133 S.Ct. 2652 2662 (June 26, 2013). To the extent that the Contraception Mandate does in fact compel a corporation to provide an abortifacient, Respondents and others who object to abortions should have been advised that they must resort to the political process to seek modification or repeal of the law as it stands today.
Having found to the contrary, the majority must proceed to address the second tier of questions under RFRA, those questions which occur after the burden of demonstration has shifted to the Government. The Government will need to demonstrate to the majority that the Contraception Mandate achieves a compelling governmental interest, and that it is narrowly-tailored so as to achieve that interest in the fashion most permissive of religious freedom possible.
I disagree with my Brethren’s reasoning on these questions only because they reached the questions in the first place. I suspect that had I found cause to address the merits of this issue, I would have joined this portion of their opinion. As I would find that the Greens necessarily fail to articulate an actionable claim, however, this portion of my opinion is not essential to my reasoning herein.
I would hold that no Respondent has stated a claim upon which relief can be granted. A corporation cannot hold a religious belief, and therefore cannot meet the first prong of the RFRA test. Insofar as this is the ruling of the majority, the majority is on solid ground.
But the individuals are not asked to do anything directly by the law, and therefore they cannot meet the second prong of the RFRA test. In finding that the individuals state a claim that a corporation they own and operate must act contrary to their individual religious principles, the majority plays with fire: they allow those engaged in commerce to invoke the corporate form when it is convenient to do so, and to set it aside when it is convenient to do so and then inject those non-human entities with all manner of exclusively human attributes. Today, that attribute is religion. Tomorrow, it might be love. The day after, it might be racial prejudice.
The potential for abuse is obvious, and we can only hope that modifications to the law in the future will tailor and curtail the bizarre idea that corporations are legally extensions of their owners rather than discrete entities.
Therefore, I would vacate the ruling of the Tenth Circuit, and remand the case to the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma for dismissal of the entire matter with prejudice and further proceedings thereafter consistent with the law and the interests of justice.
Likko, C.J., was joined in this dissent by Togut, J.
The necessary order resulting from this opinion is that the decision of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part. A majority of this Court finds that the Greens have established a likelihood of success on the merits, such that the injunction should be upheld pending trial of the matter.
The case is remanded to the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma for further proceedings, including but not limited to dismissal of the claims of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Marden, imposition of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Contraceptive Mandate as to the Greens to the fullest extent necessary to give the fullest effect reasonable throughout all further proceedings, including as to the claims of all other parties, consistent with this opinion and the interests of justice. The Greens shall be deemed the prevailing parties as to the appeal through this stage.
Comment Rescue: What, if anything, is Wrong with the Theory of Heteronormativity?
Damn. Why didn’t the majority pull a Roberts and decide the case based on the argument gummint should have made rather than the one they actually did? Ay-yai-yai.
I thought about this comment for a bit, @stillwater .
I would acquit my Brethren of “activism.” Though I disagree with them, they chose the narrowest path to travel to reach the conclusion they found correct. They did not hold any act of Congress unconstitutional on its face, only the application of one such act unconstitutional given a particular set of facts. A court is not “activist” to rule in favor of any particular side or to strike down a law; doing so when necessary is the essential role of the court.
Here, the Government has not chosen to apply its regulation uniformly, but has instead exempted a large number of employers from the mandate. In such a circumstance, it must present evidence why it possesses a compelling interest for declining to make those exemptions available to the Greens.
I do not agree with this at all, and would need evidence to convince me otherwise. The exemptions the government has made are for organizations who’s very entity is their religious belief; without that belief, the organization would not exist. This is not the case with Hobby Lobby; they can sell their business tomorrow and it would continue to function separately from their beliefs.
Other ‘exemptions’ are not actual exemptions, they are extensions, and within a few years, all employer-provided health insurance will have to provide the same contraception benefits.
Similarly, the government talks generally about why a contraceptive mandate is important – but it devotes very little to discussing why it has a compelling interest in these specific forms of contraceptives. Yes, they mention that these particular forms of contraception are either more effective than other forms or are important emergency contraception. But – unless I missed it – conspicuously absent from the government’s briefs is any discussion of the costs of those forms of contraception to employees, or how difficult those forms of contraception would be for employees to obtain without insurance coverage.
Generally speaking my interest in this whole project wanes if we’re going to use this tight limitation of only considering the arguments made by the parties specific lawyers in briefs even in our discussion of the legal merits in comments. What’s the point of getting into the various hypotheticals and fulsome arguments about what the compelling interest might be or etc. if it ultimately doesn’t matter at all if the parties didn’t make the same argument – even for the purposes of discussion?
As far as issuing the Ordinary Court decision, if the justices feel they need to hew to that limitation that actual courts face, that’s fine. I don’t see the point in limiting the surrounding conversation, though. The people’s interest in any case of import at the SCOTUS bar is a consideration of all the important legal merits of the issues before the Court, not only the merits of the arguments actually made at court. The freedom and willingness to fully consider them all it seems to me is one of the things that makes this whole project of considerably more value to people than just reading the briefs and the decisions.
Speaking for myself only here, on this particular part of the case, all that seemed relevant was the specific facts in this specific case. On the standing issue, I had no problem going outside of the briefs (and in fact I did). I don’t even have much of a problem going outside of the briefs to the extent we’re talking about whether there’s a compelling interest in the mandate generally speaking.
I didn’t mean to be overzealous in offering the critique. In fact, for the purposes of issuing the opinion, it probably will streamline things quite a bit to limit what is considered to what the parties argue. (Though considering more doesn’t have to extend to a duty to review every argument that’s out there… justices could just include whatever ones they come across that they find influence their opinion and call it good enough.) I’ve got no problem if we stick with that approach for crafting the rulings.
It’s just once we get to discussions, I’d rather that the whole “but they didn’t make that argument in court” thing were to be dropped fairly quickly. We understand that the decision might only reflect that, but the comments don’t have to come down to a defense of the ruling that OC issued that’s highly shaped by which arguments were made in a court proceeding none of us have any influence over. We can just stipulate that the justices are limited to what was argued at court and their decision reflects that, but move on to a more inclusive discussion of the merits in comments, so that there’s a point to people who just want to think through the issues in an overall way doing so in the context of this project.
we may never think of an argument one of you does.
I thought of that same suggestion just after I posted but I felt I was already being too suggest-y about this unambiguously awesome project as it was. So, thanks for making it. I think it’s a good idea.
I think you may have misunderstood my position. I’ll try to lay it out a bit more clearly.
On the standing issue, it was a close issue for me not because of the issue of whether there was a substantial burden but because it was unclear whether individuals could ever assert standing based on a regulation directed at the company they owned.
On this substantive issue, I honestly don’t actually have that much sympathy for Hobby Lobby. But the government’s arguments were so incredibly shoddy in my view, and the evidence it actually relied on so scant, that I thought they had failed to meaningfully refute Hobby Lobby’s arguments on the facts at this procedural stage of the case. I think the Government absolutely can present those arguments, and procedurally they still have an opportunity to do so. But – especially since this is so case-specific to Hobby Lobby – I don’t think it appropriate to rely on outside sources to define the government’s interest.
I’m actually a bit surprised by the pushback on this point as compared to the general lack of pushback on the standing issue, if only because in our behind the scenes debates (and indeed as reflected in Burt’s dissent), there was basically a unanimous belief that the government had fallen short in demonstrating a compelling interest. The real debate behind the scenes was always over the issues of whether either the corporate entity or the Greens could have standing.
Your comment above pretty much hit the nail on the head in noting that we based our opinion here on the arguments the government actually made rather than the ones it should have made. But I don’t think other groups should be able to define the government’s interest, especially when the policy at issue is a wholly administrative regulation – if the Obama Administration can’t explain why it has a compelling interest for its own decisions, then how is someone else going to?
This troubles me greatly; so I want to dig into it. Can you explain why you feel the government didn’t make a compelling case? Because the law instructed the government to study and report on areas where there gaps in basic preventive care for women that impacted their health and well being; and IOM reported, with the recommendation. I read the IOM report, and it is compelling, and based on a lot of data from decades of research. I’m not sure that the government needed to go beyond that. Are you suggesting that the government needed to defend the report? That the contents of the report weren’t evidence?
The “compelling interests” the government identified were gender equality and ensuring access to contraceptives. IMO, gender equality is an important, but not compelling, governmental interest.
While there would be economic injustice, we would survive as a nation so long as women and men enjoy equal protection of the laws. Equal protection at the hands of private actors (again I think that is important and I endorse things like the Equal Pay Act) are not on the same level.
Access to contraceptives is not a compelling governmental interest, either. The government must not ban them or restrict them so strenuously as to effectively ban them. But no one argued that without to Contraception Mandate, women who wanted these drugs could not get them, nor even that to do so would more than very moderately more inconvenient or expensive.
IMO, gender equality is an important, but not compelling, governmental interest.
@zic See my response to you above. But just to be clear, the problem with the government’s case wasn’t – to me, at least – whether the government has a compelling interest in a contraceptive mandate generally. I think it clearly does.
The problem instead was whether it has a compelling interest with respect to requiring these four specific forms of contraception be provided by this specific employer. From what I read in the briefs – and it’s certainly possible that we all missed something in those briefs since we don’t have an army of law clerks – the government didn’t even attempt to show how difficult it would be for HL employees to access these specific forms of contraception absent the mandate, nor did it even attempt to explain the purpose for the exemptions and why HL should be ineligible for those exemptions.
That doesn’t mean that the government is unable to do that, and that’s why I tried to make clear that they still get another bite at that apple in the trial court – this isn’t intended to be a final ruling on the merits. It just means that the government thus far has failed to make those arguments.
Okay, @zic, I’ve gotten pushback on that opinion before, and I know that as phrased it can go down the wrong way pretty easily.
But no one argued that without to Contraception Mandate, women who wanted these drugs could not get them, nor even that to do so would more than very moderately more inconvenient or expensive.
Only moderately more difficult according to Burt – not enough to rise to the level of a compelling government interest.
I’d be interested in a general review of the jurisprudence on compelling, important, etc. government interests. On its face it seems a standard that’s highly dependent on the policy preferences of the person doing the assessment (indeed, “compelling” references precisely a personal assessment of the magnitude of the interest – does it compel a person to support the government in pursuing it at some cost to liberty – whereas “important” at least references a measure that exists outside the assessment of a person).
“IMO, gender equality is an important, but not compelling, governmental interest.
Is racial equality a compelling government interest? That’s not a rhetorical question, but a legal one. While it’s clear to me that a government cannot promulgate and enforce laws that have differential racial effects unless it has a compelling government interest, it’s less clear to me that government has a compelling government interest–as the courts use that term–in creating racial equality. Maybe the courts have said so, and I’m just not aware, though.
I really need to say: read the report.
20% of women experience an unintended pregnancy that results in either an abortion (about 45%) or re-write life’s plan.
In most of those cases, the medical care, prescriptions, surgical procedures, or cost are the reasons behind lack of access.
That is in the IOM report. Failure to read that and comprehend it as compelling sort of boggles my mind. That’s 1 in 5 women.
So the question should turn to the specific types of contraception HL singled out as a violation of their beliefs because they cause abortion. And the science of those medical treatments and the definition of abortion.
Abortion involved a fetus already implanted in the uterine wall; these prevent implanting. The egg, without that home, is just an egg, washed out with the menses. They’re suggesting any interference with a fertilized egg = abortion; an attempt to redefine it.
respectfully, but I don’t think that racial equality and gender equality ought to be equal under the law. To the extent that the government does indeed have the right to punish attempted suicide, and using a similar rationale (government has an interest in ensuring that folks remain alive), the government ought to be able to compel limited gender equality… particularly in the area of health care.
@michael-drew points to something important here, which is the calling something a compelling governmental interest, or an important governmental interest, or a legitimate governmental interest, all affect when, why, and how the government may regulate to advance the interest in question. The prevailing legal standard for gender equity issues is that of intermediate scrutiny, which places us at the level of calling it an important governmental interest. For those who would read into my signing off on this classification as somehow disparaging of the rights of women, they are in mind that the antonym of “important” is “unimportant” and I do not think that gender equity is unimportant.
Zic, as near as I can tell it you are arguing about different things. You are making the case, compellingly, for women to have access to contraception but the others are not looking for that. They are asking why if exemptions that have been granted in other cases the government has a compelling interest in not granting one in this case.
The argument is not should women have access to contraception, it is -given that we allow churches to limit access to their employees why is it unacceptable to allow religious business owners to do the same?
Just to be clear here: I am arguing that the interest of employees outweigh the Green’s religious rights. It does not matter if there are two or (as in the Green’s case) 10,000. As women, their health-care needs are a compelling interest that should not depend on the Green’s beliefs.
These bodies in question are the properties of these employees, the Greens purchase their labor, and the insurance the Greens provide is part of their wages. How each of those women opts to deal with her reproductive health is private. That health insurance will cover contraception is law, and is specific law because the need was unmet, putting women’s health and well-being in serious jeopardy.
Hey Mark, thanks for the lengthy reply, which makes a lot of sense to me. On rereading my questions (which were a little confused in spots) I realized that they may have sounded as if I was making an accusation or pointing out an inconsistency when in fact I was pretty sure your reasoning on this stuff was opaque to me (as well as that I was confused about things). So thanks for clarifying.
Interesting. Not the way I thought it was going to shake out after reading Part II.
Yeah, that’s basically my thoughts as to this. If I’m the district judge, I have zero Idea of how to apply this ruling both as to the corporation and to the Greens.
Not the way I thought it was going to shake out after reading Part II.
the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling interest.
Yeah, I pretty much have to agree with this.
…It’s worth pointing out that least restrictive means are only required if there is a substantial burden on free exercise (and the entity seeking relief qualifies for protection under RFRA and etc.). So that’s probably why this question, which might seem fairly clear-cut to some, nevertheless wasn’t such a big part of the arguments at court or in public about this (though of course it was there by all means).
Most forms of contraception really do require a doctor’s oversight, so it’s not just a matter of gov’t paying the pharmacy to give the stuff out for free. IUD’s need (which are not probably the safest and most effective) have to be surgically implanted and removed.
Well… maybe. It works for me, and it works for you, and it works for most folks here, but there’s a bit of a problem lurking there.
This whole thing is predicated on the belief, accurate or not, that certain forms of contraceptives are abortifacients. Federal law prohibits Federal funding of abortions. So is your remedy even available, even putting aside the intractability of the politics for the time being? Would it just be a setup for more lawsuits?
I could find that as a matter of moral caution, they could have believed that these drugs are sometimes abortifacients because there appears to be some degree of scientific support that the drug can cause a fertilized egg to slough off of the uterine wall.
There actually is not any scientific support for that, nor does there appear to be any way such a thing could plausible happen. That entire assertions appeared in a *false* claim originally put forward by contraceptive companies in the 70s, that had literally no support, medically, and was quickly recanted. It was taken up by crazy anti-contraceptice lunatics who wanted to make contraceptives appear worse.
Even *Plan B* works this way. Plan B is an emergency level of hormones to *immediately* stop ovulation, and it works because the fact is that fertilization works somewhat backwards than people think…sperm doesn’t met egg halfway down, sperm goes in and sits there for a bit, and egg runs into it.
The idea that ‘pregnancy hormones causing lack of implantation or the fertlized egg to slough off’ is idiotic. Women are *supposed* to have those hormones while pregnancy, and in fact they *stop* menstruation. A women on birth control is, *hormonally*, pregnant.(1) That is why it is prescribed for acne and whatnot.
Hell, they sometimes prescribe these ‘birth control’ hormones during in-vitro fertilization to make sure everything is ready for implantation. They have literally the opposite effect of ending pregnancies.
Burt, so what? IANAL, but from what I understand that under current law, paying for abortions can not be made mandatory. The owners of Hobby Lobby are asserting that they *believe* that A is B, and that since requiring them to pay for B is not lawful, they should be granted a waiver from paying for A.
That will be a matter for the District Court to take up. If my cursory look at the science turns out to have npbeen reports of well-publicized untruths (as @davidtc suggests, supra, then paying for plan B is not paying for abortions. Nothing in the record I reviewed offered any substantial guidance on whether this is a disputed fact or not, so I took the Greens at their word because the legal analysis is based on belief and there appeared, on the briefs, to be room for that belief to congrue with fact.
So? Let’s say that a party genuinely believes something. When is a court required to treat that belief (not the fact *of* belief) as a fact?
For example, there are a lot of people (call them ‘militia guys’) who assert a variety of beliefs that the federal government has either far more limited powers than it customarily exercises, or that the federal government is illegitimate.
Well, those are (likely erroneous) conclusions of law because all judges are lawyers as a result of the process by which judges are selected for appointment. Consequently, courts are inherently good at resolving the kinds of questions which are by definition legal (e.g., can the BLM seize cattle to enforce unpaid grazing fees).
Courts are not so good at resolving questions of science since very few judges are also scientists. They need expert witnesses to provide information.
@burt-likko I understand the problems judges face in showing respect for belief in situations like this.
Women have been trapped by their biology forever. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again; our voices are not in recorded history on this topic. At all. It’s all the words and opinions of men. To find what we might have thought or wished for or yearned for as a basic right to our own bodies, you have to look to the medicinal herbals, rife with plants used for bringing on the menses.
At some point, this gets to a very basic right of women to have the dignity of their bodies; to not have them subject to someone else’s beliefs. But that’s such an ingrained habit, and reliable contraception is such a novel thing, that it’s hard to recognize for the violation of women’s basic right to self. Those old habits hang on hard.
First, the “dissent” repeats the erroneous claims of “none of the Respondents have articulated claims which confer an intrusion upon their right of free religious exercise under RFRA” which I disproved in the “Part III” article and will not reprove here.
The dissent then describes the substantial burden as “a mere ‘generalized grievance’”, despite the fact the burden requires the Greens, the Hahns, Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Specialties, Mardel, Autocam, et al., to engage in an action forbidden by Their faith, despite the definition of such burdens as “substantial” in United States v. Lee (1982), Hernandez v Commissioner (1989), Thomas v. Review Board (1981), and Sherbert v. Verner (1963).
The dissent then ignores a key factor in RFRA: the government interest must not just be a compelling interest; the application of the burden TO THE PERSON BURDENED must be in furtherance of a compelling government interest.
The dissent then reiterates the disproven notion corporations cannot exercise religion. The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, each of which have successfully brought religious exercise claims before the Supreme Court and each of which are corporations, would be very surprised to learn, even though They had standing to sue, somehow They did not have standing to sue.
The dissent then asserts another disproven statement: “But the individuals are not asked to do anything directly by the law”. How the dissent expects Hobby Lobby et al. to comply with the federal regulation if the Individuals in question do not the steps Their faith forbids is beyond Me.
The dissent then presents a “parade of horribles” fallacy with the root cause being a failure to recognize, if People retain Their right to exercise religion when seeking a profit as Individuals (Cf., Sherbert v. Verner) and retain a right to exercise religion in concert with Others (Cf., every Supreme Court case where a religious organization has been a party), They clearly retain a right to exercise religion when seeking a profit in concert with Others. The fact They may “invoke the corporate form when it is convenient to do so, and to set it aside when it is convenient to do so” stems from the nature of religious exercise combined with the terms of the First Amendment while the liability limitation and taxation benefits of incorporation are statutory constructions which must adhere to the principles embodied in the United States constitution.
What have good judges *been doing*? Somebody claiming to sincerely believe something is not a new thing, no matter how many people supporting the Greens act like it is.
Adding on – Burt: “Well, those are (likely erroneous) conclusions of law because all judges are lawyers as a result of the process by which judges are selected for appointment. Consequently, courts are inherently good at resolving the kinds of questions which are by definition legal (e.g., can the BLM seize cattle to enforce unpaid grazing fees).
However, judges also do that; they bring in experts and make decisions. This is not something fresh out of the labs.
The Greens are not making a claim that these methods are actually abortions; to the best of my knowledge, they’d be home free if they (legally) were. The Greens are claiming that they *believe* that these methods are actually abortions, and that the courts should proceed as if they are.

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