Week 7
Autonomy
This week, we explored how women's autonomy (with respect to contraception) has been impacted by the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. This decision allows corporations to opt-out of an ACA contraception coverage requirement by appealing to morality and religious freedom. Throughout the week we discussed how this case impacted contraceptive coverage for women in the US, and how the issue goes beyond sexual health.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)
Case Brief
Procedural History:
Hobby Lobby sued in district court and they were denied their claim, with the 3rd circuit Court of Appeals affirming that decision. Hobby Lobby again filed a claim in a different district court for an injunction, which was also denied, however, when Hobby Lobby appealed to the 10th circuit Court of Appeals the court granted them their claim.
Facts:
The ACA requires “specific employers’ group health plans to furnish ‘preventative care and screenings’ for women without ‘any cost sharing requirements’” which include providing coverage for 20 contraceptive methods. However, religious employers and religious non-profits are exempt from providing coverage for contraceptives. Hobby lobby stores is a for-profit company that holds “sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception” and thus they believe the exemption should extend to them as well even though they are not a church and not a non-profit organization. Hobby Lobby sued the health and human services department (in charge of mandating the preventative care requirements) and relevant federal officials.
Issue:
Is the ACA’s preventative care and screenings mandate requirement for for-profit companies a violation of Hobby Lobby’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion (as a closely held company)?
Legal Rule Applied:
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of ’93 and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Analysis:
The ACA’s mandate violates the RFRA because the federal law requires that the government take action that would constitute the “least restrictive means” of serving its own interest. According to the majority opinion, the government does present a compelling interest in the HHS’s regulation, but because it offers alternatives to religious non-profits and church’s that it doesn’t offer to companies with a religious stance, the court concludes that HHS’s regulation fails the balancing test and is unlawful because of the burden it places on those companies. A key issue argued by the majority opinion on behalf of Hobby Lobby is that part of the contraceptive requirement includes 4 medications that the court considers to be “abortifacients” which go against the Mennonite faith of the business owners. The court reads into RFRA and finds that the statute creates a legal fiction making corporations “persons” and uses this distinction to tie the issue to the free exercise clause in the first amendment and in the statute itself.
Conclusions: The court finds in favor of hobby lobby and determines that the ACA’s preventative care mandate violated the RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause.
Concurrence:
Kennedy: Justice Kennedy wants to reaffirm that the court does not invalidate the compelling interest present in the ACA’s mandate, but also reaffirms that the HHS did not employ the “least restrictive means” in compelling companies to comply with its interest.
Dissents:
Ginsburg: Ginsburg argues that this decision breaks precedent by arguing that the mandate is merely an “incidental effect” of a valid statue. Furthermore, the ruling denies the rights held by the female employees of the company. Ginsburg argues that for-profit companies are not religious by nature when compared to churches and non-profits, thus the mandate doesn’t violate the RFRA or the free exercise clause.
Breyer and Kagan: Agree with Ginsburg. These judges want to state that the court should not and that they did not decide to assume standing for for-profit corporations or their owners have legitimate standing to sue under the RFRA.
Blog Post
Article: “So, You’ve Heard of the Duggars? Bodily Autonomy, Religious Exemption, and the American South”
My article, written by Lisa Corrigan, is about the purity movement (as represented and evangelized by the Duggar’s) and how their political power and patriarchal ideology in the South can explain certain aspects of the Hobby Lobby decision. The article opens up by discussing the Quiverfull movement, a religious movement that emphasizes strict male patriarchy and fundamentalist Christian values; a key part of the Quiverfull movement, as the name implies, is having as many kids as possible. The founders, Rick and Jan Hess of the movement even believed that, “if just 8 million American Christians began supplying more so-called “arrows for the war” by having six or more kids, the Hesses’s estimate that Christian Right ranks could swell to 550 million within a century”. The goal of foundational writers for the Quiverfull movement and other like-minded groups is to shape a political revolution based on these conservative values. The article then discusses why understanding the “theological grounding and real-life implications of” the arguments espoused by these fundamentalists. The article posits the example of the Duggar’s and their activism in Arkansas which pushes for abortion bans and defunding planned parenthood, among their other positions. The article argues that “the Hobby Lobby decision….suggests that all sex should be procreative, shames women for wanting to control their bodies and their pregnancies, leaves pregnancy up to chance, and punishes women who do use contraception” all while “characterizing [use of contraception] as a female decision that is excessive, selfish, and heretical”.
The portion of the article that analyzes the values espoused by the Duggar’s and the Hobby Lobby decisions effect on our legal understanding of autonomy brings to mind Sepper’s argument detailing the “dichotomy [which] “tends to legitimate and mystify patterns of inequality and structures of power through which individual autonomy, social institutions, and legal action are accomplished”. A portion of Sepper’s autonomy argument also rests on the “dueling notions of the public-private divide” which results in a society that is shaped around the idea that “women’s needs are more appropriately delivered through a public, welfare model, while men’s needs are situated within the realm of commercial, wage labor”. Parallel Sepper’s argument with the idea introduced by Corrigan that “The emphasis on separate spheres for men and women is typical of the purity culture of the Christian patriarchy movement” which ultimately “demonstrate…the foundational claims of the Christian patriarchy and their use in policy debates around the country…are shaping public policy in ways that shrink civic participation and civil rights for huge numbers of citizens”. This comparison is focused on autonomy, but the article also has a great line of discussion on the intentional exclusion of sexual orientation in Alito’s opinion as a potential discriminatory claim that could rest on religious freedom rights for corporations as well which is also something Sepper brought up, but the autonomy argument is sufficient for this post.