SCOTUS Hears Hobby Lobby Case

Motomom34 · Mar 29, 2014

The FRC Action Facebook invite, which already boasts over 21,600 participants and over 109,400 invited, urges Americans to “show your support” for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga by “joining and sharing #HobbyLobbyDay!”

FRC Action lists the following ways to partake in the campaign:

1. Change your profile photo to show your support: http://ow.ly/uIQEP
2. Shop Hobby Lobby or hobbylobby.com on March 29th and say "thank you" with a card from your family: http://ow.ly/uMUH5
3. Share a picture of your shopping trip using #HobbyLobbyDay hashtag on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram."

The event is a continuation of FRC’s focus on religious freedom. Although misreported by the media, FRC along with the Alliance Defending Freedom commissioned a poll published on Nov. 25, which showed 59 percent of likely voters opposing forcing employers to pay for employee insurance plans covering contraceptives and abortifacient drugs.

Read more: FRC Plans 'Hobby Lobby Day' March 29 | NewsBusters
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Today is Hobby Lobby day. If you believe in their right, their freedoms, please show your support.

bfayer · Mar 29, 2014

chelloveck,

Although I respect your views, I do have to take issue with a couple of things. Also, I apologise if I am not as clear as I could be, I was up all last night on a Boy Scout outing, and I have not slept in over 30 hours.

My statement about atheist oppression does follow our discussion because I used it as an example that oppression was a human trait not a religious one. The fact is humans are ethnocentric by nature and will (and do) use any excuse to oppress each other. There is nothing special about religion that causes people to oppress other people any more than they would without religion. If oppression is a trait of religion, then it is also a trait of atheism by the same standard. But in fact there is nothing inherent about religion that causes oppression, nor is there anything inherent about atheism that causes oppression. Just because both groups do it does not make it an inherent trait. It is however an undoubtedly human trait.

As for your disagreeing with my use of "agnostic", I was using the political definition not the religious definition, The political definition has nothing to do with the existence of a deity. Since we were talking about politics and a political document, I thought that would be clear, my apologies for not being clear. The first amendment is, and always was intend by the original drafters to be politically agnostic. Their view was essentially "we are not taking sides, we just want the government to stay out of religion and not tell anyone what they can believe, or how anyone chooses to practice or not practice their religion".

You said: "The US Constitution makes no claims about the existence or non-existence of a god or gods." In this context that is political agnosticism in a nut shell.

With regards to your last statement about 20th century technology, it actually reinforces my point, The technology was used by those that had access to it, regardless of their religious affiliation. Although I do disagree somewhat, modern theocracies such as Iran have access to everything and more that Stalin and Mao had, yet they have not committed the wholesale mass killings and starvation that the communist atheists did. That would lead one to believe that theocracies are somewhat less prone to mass oppression. I don't believe that is necessarily true, but it is a data point.

Our founding fathers in the U.S. were very bright folks. It is no accident that the 1st and 2nd amendment are where they are in the Bill of Rights. For a government to successfully oppress a people they must: Exercise control of their belief system, control the dissemination of information, control the ability to freely associate, and control the means of defense. Just limiting the government's ability to do those simple things will put a quick end to most attempts at government oppression.

The Hobby Lobby case is not about religion, it's about political freedom from oppression.

ditch witch · Mar 29, 2014

I don't consider the regimes of Stalin, Mao, and the Kims to be atheistic. Regardless of their initial motivations, they crowned a single ruler as their deity, and worshiped him as devoutly as any Christian, Muslim, or Jew ever did their god. A true atheistic society would not hang pictures of their ego-maniacal dear leader all over the place and proclaim him a god. Anyway.

I rarely shop Hobby Lobby and I don't agree with the corporations-are-people ruling as far as the tax code goes because, but the insurance they offer should be their choice. If you're that busted there are places you can go to get it free.

Pax Mentis · Mar 30, 2014

Minuteman said: ↑

Hobby Lobby is owned by a devout Christian family and they promote family and traditional Christian values. They have every right to run their business in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs.
IF more corporations were run by people of deeply held religious belief we wouldn't have so much corruption, fraud and unfair labor practices.
Maybe in your meme world every business is run on humanistic me first selfish principles but in reality, at least here in America, there are many business owners who hold to a more compassionate, and fair business model.
I pray for a favorable decision for Hobby Lobby in this case.
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As I remember, the most common reason for incorporating a closely held business is to put a "layer" between the owners and the potential liabilities of a sole proprietorship or partnership. Somehow, the corporation claiming the rights of the owners while protecting those owners from personal financial responsibility seems to me wrong.

I believe the mandates of Obamacare to be at least "extra-constitutional" and unconstitutional with regard to the 10th amendment, and that the protection of the 1st to be applicable to individuals, I have trouble with protections of the 1st being applied to a corporation....regardless of the religious beliefs of the owners.

At what point would a corporation receive these protections? Would it be ONLY if ALL of the owners hold these religious convictions? If only 1 of many owners hold those convictions? The majority of the stockholders?

mysterymet · Mar 30, 2014

That is why I make a distinction between publicly traded companies and privately owned companies. If a private company is owned by a single person or family and they all hold a particular belief that is much different than someone who owns shares in a public company. If you used to be a private company then decided to raise money by selling stocks then all bets are off. You've just made yourself a public company.

chelloveck · Mar 30, 2014

mysterymet said: ↑

That is why I make a distinction between publicly traded companies and privately owned companies. If a private company is owned by a single person or family and they all hold a particular belief that is much different than someone who owns shares in a public company. If you used to be a private company then decided to raise money by selling stocks then all bets are off. You've just made yourself a public company.
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It cannot be assumed that all shareholders of a privately owned company will necessarily hold the same religious beliefs, even if all belong to the same religion. Even if all the shareholders are of the one family...it cannot be assumed that all family members will have the same convictions (The infamous Phelps family is a case in point).

The shareholders in a corporation may own the corporation(be the corporation public or private), and although the shareholders have all kinds of beliefs, secular and sacred...they are legal entities separate to the corporation itself which is its own distinct legal entity. A corporation is a legal construct: Its principle obligations are to obey the laws of the land such as they are, turn a profit for its shareholders and defend its own existence against its competitors. You will note that the petitioner to this litigation is not the Green Family who own the corporation, but the corporation itself. The Corporation is a legal construct that exists as words on paper (or more probably these days, words in digital format stored in data archives) in lawyer's offices, and the offices of those organisations that register and regulate corporations as legal entities.

The question still remains....does an artificial legal construct have standing to claim that it has any religious beliefs, any more than other artificial constructs such as contracts, or any more than an industrial robot on a manufacturing production line that produces devotional crucifixes? The Founding Fathers who created the US Constitution would be appalled at the power that modern corporations have aggregated for themselves; power that has deeply corrupted the political institutions that are supposed to represent the people's will. The Founding fathers very wisely kept corporations under a tight rein.

A corporation is a separate legal entity that has been incorporated either directly through legislation or through a registration process established by law. Incorporated entities have legal rights and liabilities that are distinct from their employees and shareholders Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society. Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
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Dissenting in the case Liggett v. Lee in 1933, Justice Louis Brandeis famously expressed frustration with some popular constitutional misconceptions surrounding the nature of corporations and their historic rights. In a well-documented and characteristically fact-laden opinion, Brandeis chastised his contemporaries for acting “as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen.” Such a deferential view, he argued, understated the power of a democracy to hold corporations accountable and encouraged public apathy toward corporate abuses as an “inescapable price of civilized life ... to be borne with resignation.”

Brandeis protested otherwise: “Throughout the greater part of our history a different view prevailed.” And indeed it did. But you’d be hard-pressed to know that, given the summary renderings of the corporate past on display in the Supreme Court’s famous 2010 decision Citizens United v. FEC, in which both the dissent and a concurrence relied on a limited set of historical sources to support opposing visions of the history of corporations. This week, the court will revisit and perhaps remake the history of corporate rights in America when it hears arguments in the widely watched case Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. Hobby Lobby, a for-profit business corporation, has argued for a further break with the constitutional past in order to escape its current legal obligations under the Affordable Care Act. The chain of craft stores argues that corporations are entitled to the same religious freedom protections as people.

With so much at stake in the current debate over corporate rights, we should not be surprised to find enterprising advocates rewriting history to create a useable past. But we should demand more rigorous thinking from the court. The court itself, and especially Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have been telling us for decades that American history deserves significant deference. So it seems reasonable that before altering the balance of power between corporations and the American people, the court should carefully consider recent scholarship in history.

Contrary to present efforts to depict corporations as simple and natural entities—like persons—entitled to constitutional rights, a different view prevailed for most of American history. Until the mid-20th century, the corporation was seen as a special and artificial creature of the government. It has never been seen as entitled to the same array of rights guaranteed to citizens.
This view was held not only by lay people and legislators but by the justices of the court itself. Chief Justice John Marshall did not equivocate in Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819: “A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.” In 1839, Chief Justice Roger Taney agreed wholeheartedly in Bank of Augusta v. Earle: “A corporation can have no legal existence out of the boundaries of the sovereignty by which it is created. It exists only in contemplation of law and by force of the law. ... It is indeed a mere artificial being.”

These two powerful architects of original Supreme Court authority insisted upon this artificial status in order to hold early American corporations particularly accountable to the state and to the public at large. Most of America’s first corporations—bridge companies, water companies, transportation companies, banks, and insurance companies—were viewed as essentially public service corporations or public franchises. In addition to grants of property and public financing, the state usually accorded such entities special privileges like monopoly power, the power of eminent domain, or toll-taking authority. In return for those benefits, the government insisted on the special public obligations of corporations. Not only were corporations not exempted in any way from generally applicable regulatory laws, but they were routinely held to higher standards of public service, public accountability, social responsibility, and public trust.

Even after the proliferation of general incorporation laws, and even after most state constitutions prohibited legislatures from granting privileges to particular corporations, states continued to treat corporations as artificial entities with special obligations to the states that created them. As late as 1911, just before the ratification of the 16th Amendment legitimated the personal income tax, the court in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. upheld the corporate income tax on the grounds that it was properly an excise tax on the privilege of doing business as a corporation. From internal governance to broader disclosure rules, corporations are subject to more oversight than are individual citizens. And for most of American history, nothing in a corporation’s legal status was construed to protect it from generally operable police power statutes passed by the legislature in the interest of the public’s health, safety, comfort, and welfare.
Through most of our history, when the Supreme Court did discuss the constitutional rights of corporations, it only reinforced these principles of artificial status and public obligation. Despite a certain gauzy mythology of corporate rights that has grown up around the 1886 case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the court carefully parsed the different clauses of the 14th Amendment, granting corporations equal-protection and due-process rights when necessary to protect the property interests of the human persons who constituted their shareholders but denying corporations the privileges and immunities of citizens or due-process protections for life and liberty. In 1906 in Hale v. Henkel, for example, it denied a corporation Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination on the grounds that governments had to be able to monitor the artificial entities they created. Until the last quarter of the 20th century the few exceptions involved media companies defining the freedom of the press (Grosjean v. American Press Co., 1936) and nonprofit voluntary associations defending the civil rights of African-Americans (NAACP v. Button, 1963).

The court’s move toward extending liberty rights to corporations is even more recent. In 1978, the court held in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti that citizens had the right to hear corporate political speech, effectively granting corporations First Amendment speech rights to spend money to influence the political process. But even then, the decision was contentious. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in dissent, reminded the court of its own history: Though it had determined in Santa Clara that corporations had 14th Amendment property protections, it soon after ruled that the liberty of the due-process clause was “the liberty of natural, not artificial persons.”

And just as Rehnquist pointed to the lack of historical basis for according liberty rights to corporations in 1978, Scalia also conceded the “recency” of First Amendment jurisprudence generally in his concurring opinion in Citizens United, noting that “we did not invalidate a state law on First Amendment grounds until 1931 ... and a federal law until 1965.” Corporate First Amendment rights would not come until even later. Justices from both ends of the political spectrum, from Brandeis to Rehnquist, were clear on the historic limitations on corporate rights and equally clear on the reasons those rights needed to be limited. Before further experimenting with the radical expansion of corporate constitutional rights as contemplated in Hobby Lobby, we urge the court to reconsider the well-established American tradition of controlling corporations and extending rights only sparingly. There is a reason America and our Supreme Court jurists have long struggled to hold corporations especially accountable to our democracy. Those reasons are as compelling today as ever.

Naomi Lamoreaux is Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics and History and chairwoman of the history department at Yale University, and recently co-wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.

William Novak is the Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and recently co-wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...hood_heres_the_real_history_of_corporate.html
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Yes, Corporations Are People
And that’s why Hobby Lobby should lose at the Supreme Court.
By Adam Winkler

At next week’s arguments, the Supreme Court will debate whether business corporations have religious liberty. Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores with 13,000 employees, along with a small Mennonite furniture maker, seek exemptions from the Obamacare requirement that employer health insurance plans cover certain forms of birth control. The case raises anew the question that sparked so much controversy after the Citizens United case: Are corporations “people” with the same rights as citizens?

Corporate personhood is easily ridiculed on late-night television, but as Eric Posner pointed out in Slate, the law often “treats various nonhuman, nonsentient entities as ‘persons’ for certain legal purposes.” Yet that doesn’t mean Hobby Lobby has all the rights you and I have. Indeed, the justices should hold that Hobby Lobby does not have religious rights precisely because the corporation is a legal person.

When corporations were first invented, the very idea was to create a fictional “person” that could be recognized by law and exist in perpetuity. Writing in the 1700s, the British jurist William Blackstone explained that “it has been found necessary, when it is for the advantage of the public” to “constitute artificial persons, who may maintain a perpetual succession, and enjoy a kind of legal immortality. These artificial persons are called ... corporations.”

Corporate personhood has two essential features. As Posner notes, personhood is merely the law’s shorthand way of saying that certain entities have legal rights. As a legal person, the corporation has the right to own property. It has the right to form contracts. If either of those rights is interfered with, the corporation has the right to sue in court. The second feature is separation of the entity from the stockholders. The company’s property is held in its own name and belongs to it, not to the investors. If the corporation breaches a contract, it’s the company, not the individual stockholders, that is responsible. If the corporation is harmed in some way, the individual investors are not allowed to sue. The corporation has to do it.

This conception of corporate personhood has profound and beneficial economic consequences. It means that the obligations the law imposes on the corporation, such as liability for harms caused by the firm’s operations, are not generally extended to the shareholders. Limited liability protects the owners’ personal assets, which ordinarily can’t be taken to pay the debts of the corporation. This creates incentives for investment, promotes entrepreneurial activity, and encourages corporate managers to take the risks necessary for growth and innovation. That’s why the Supreme Court, in business cases, has held that “incorporation’s basic purpose is to create a legally distinct entity, with legal rights, obligations, powers, and privileges different from those of the natural individuals who created it, who own it, or whom it employs.”

In recent constitutional law cases, however, the justices seem to have forgotten this basic principle of corporate law. In Citizens United, the court effectively held that corporations enjoyed the same free speech rights as ordinary individuals. Contrary to popular belief, however, the court did not base that holding on the idea that corporations are people. Instead, the justices said that corporations are “associations of citizens”—and those citizens who make up the corporation have constitutional rights.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the owners of the craft store chain make the same mistake. The owners claim that their personal religious beliefs would be offended if they have to provide certain forms of birth control coverage to employees. Yet Hobby Lobby’s owners aren’t required by the law to do anything. The legal duty falls on Hobby Lobby, the company, not its owners. If Hobby Lobby fails to provide the required insurance, the company, not the owners, is responsible.
What the owners want is for the Supreme Court to “pierce the corporate veil”—legalese for looking behind the corporation’s legal identity and basing a ruling on the interests and desires of the owners of the firm. But Hobby Lobby’s owners only want to pierce the veil for this one issue. They want the court to vindicate their personal beliefs on birth control, yet they still keep the protections of the corporate form for everything else, including limited liability.

Hobby Lobby should only have the rights of legal personhood that are essential for its operations. As legendary Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall wrote nearly 200 years ago, “Being the mere creature of law,” the corporation “possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it either expressly or as incidental to its very existence.” Perhaps that includes some limited speech rights, as we ordinarily expect firms to advertise and communicate with employees and customers. Yet religious liberty is not one of those rights. Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation whose business doesn’t require it to have religious freedom. In fact, granting Hobby Lobby an exemption from providing contraception coverage, a requirement that applies to other companies, would make the firm less attractive to potential employees.

Top Comment
I think the best argument in this entire article is that, as a distinct legal entity, the contraceptions provided to its employees are provided by the corporation, and not its owners.

Religious liberty is certainly appropriate for some not-for-profit corporations, like churches or nonprofits with a religious mission. If Hobby Lobby’s owners wanted to form such an organization, there was a convenient and readily available option: They could have incorporated as a nonprofit. They wouldn’t be able to make the same kind of money, but they’d have a corporation with an explicitly religious mission. And under the Affordable Care Act, they’d be exempted from the birth control requirement.

Hobby Lobby’s owners, however, formed a business corporation. By asking the Supreme Court to let them enjoy all the protections of this corporate form, but not all of its duties, Hobby Lobby’s owners want to have their corporate cake and eat it, too.

Adam Winkler is a constitutional law professor at UCLA. He is currently writing a book about the constitutional rights of corporations. Follow him on Twitter.

Corporations are people, and that’s why Hobby Lobby should lose at the Supreme Court.
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swampbilly · Apr 1, 2014

If they lose..shutter the doors...

Mike · Apr 1, 2014

swampbilly said: ↑

If they lose..shutter the doors...
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That is what Hobby Lobby has said, if they lose, it's over. They will take faith over profit. Close down. But that is the goal of our current administration. Eliminate the Christian core of America, make it AmeriKa the caliphate

swampbilly · Apr 1, 2014

Watch what happens when/if they do lose and try to shutter it up. I can see obammy and crew try to make them stay open.

Mike · Apr 1, 2014

Nah, they want to see if they can get a big tax revenue kick from the owners when they have to shutter their doors. Were I them, I would take their store online from Canada or Mexico, sell their stuff, and flip the flying finger at Obummer and his ilk

NWPilgrim · Apr 1, 2014

Mike said: ↑

Nah, they want to see if they can get a big tax revenue kick from the owners when they have to shutter their doors. Were I them, I would take their store online from Canada or Mexico, sell their stuff, and flip the flying finger at Obummer and his ilk
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Yeah, another reason to move offshore. As if EPA, OSHA, unions, EEO, NAFTA, GAT, minimum wage were not enough reasons already.

Other places have their own regulatory issues but ObamaCare is over the top expensive and heavy handed. Hate to see small and medium businesses close or move but sure can't blame them.

chelloveck · Apr 1, 2014

swampbilly said: ↑

If they lose..shutter the doors...
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Mike said: ↑

That is what Hobby Lobby has said, if they lose, it's over. They will take faith over profit. Close down. But that is the goal of our current administration. Eliminate the Christian core of America, make it AmeriKa the caliphate
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swampbilly said: ↑

Watch what happens when/if they do lose and try to shutter it up. I can see obammy and crew try to make them stay open.
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Mike said: ↑

Nah, they want to see if they can get a big tax revenue kick from the owners when they have to shutter their doors. Were I them, I would take their store online from Canada or Mexico, sell their stuff, and flip the flying finger at Obummer and his ilk
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NWPilgrim said: ↑

Yeah, another reason to move offshore. As if EPA, OSHA, unions, EEO, NAFTA, GAT, minimum wage were not enough reasons already.
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Shuttering the doors has always been an option, and if the shareholders of HL are as committed to their religious beliefs as they and as many others claim they are, they could dissolve HL as a for profit corporation, and then re-open it as a faith based, non-profit corporation with a religious mission, exempt from the strictures of the ACA. I am not so certain that they are that committed to their religious principles.

If HL closed their doors and never reopened, there would probably be some dislocation for a while...much as was the case when ENRON died as a corporate entity. However, the beauty of the capitalist free enterprise market driven system is, that whatever void might be created by HL's winding up, will ultimately be filled by others: entrepreneurs with much the same business scruples prepared to take advantage of the opportunity of profitably satisfying an unmet consumer demand for cheap crap manufactured by sweat labour in the PRC.

Other places have their own regulatory issues but ObamaCare is over the top expensive and heavy handed. Hate to see small and medium businesses close or move but sure can't blame them.
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It cannot be said that Hobby Lobby is exactly a small or even medium business. Perhaps compared to the Microsoft Corporation, but in its own right, $3 billion in revenues is not exactly a mom and pop corner shop concern.

First, the Court will have to decide that corporations are not only people, but people with consciences. Conservative “religious freedom” activists like to blur the lines between individuals and businesses. They talk about bakers and photographers, but Hobby Lobby is a corporation with $3 billion in revenues, 22,000 employees, and 550 stores around the country. Can Corporations Believe in God? - Yahoo News
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my emphasis.

kellory · Apr 1, 2014

@chelloveck .....what level of success is allowed by your standard, before you soul is automatically sold out from under you? What is the allowable dollar amount before your morals are an public commodity? Who's business is it who much money you make, or what you are worth, when you are being pilleried for your beliefs? Why should anyone be forced to give up their profits to be called virtuous? Poverty is not, nor has it ever been, an asset. Money is not, nor has it ever been, evil. Therefore, their assets and profits are NOT cause, effect, or permissible, as a strategy for demonstrating morals, or faith based decision making.
Asking anyone to throw away their income (of ANY SIZE) to defend their faith, is IMHO immoral. It make no more sense than drowning women to prove they are not witches.

Minuteman · Apr 1, 2014

I applaud the stance of the HL CEO. Close the doors rather than violate their personal religious beliefs. Like I said they are owned by a very devout family and one that puts faith above profits. So much for the all corporations serve mammon position.

mysterymet · Apr 1, 2014

Hobby lobby is not a publicly traded company. The Green family owns it. They don't even like using bar code scanners. ( maybe it's a mark of the beast thing?) these people are seriously religious. They have ministries and such associated with their business. They don't want to ban all contraception from their medical plan just the morning after pill stuff. BTW when did it become the insurance companies responsibility to prevent pregnancy instead of the individuals? I remember going to the drug store for a box of things when my boyfriend (now husband) were still in college. It worked for us then and it can work for kids now and days...

chelloveck · Apr 2, 2014

kellory said: ↑

@chelloveck .....what level of success is allowed by your standard, before you soul is automatically sold out from under you? What is the allowable dollar amount before your morals are an public commodity? Who's business is it who much money you make, or what you are worth, when you are being pilleried for your beliefs? Why should anyone be forced to give up their profits to be called virtuous? Poverty is not, nor has it ever been, an asset. Money is not, nor has it ever been, evil. Therefore, their assets and profits are NOT cause, effect, or permissible, as a strategy for demonstrating morals, or faith based decision making.
Asking anyone to throw away their income (of ANY SIZE) to defend their faith, is IMHO immoral. It make no more sense than drowning women to prove they are not witches.
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The HL corporation is not being required by the government to close. Dissolving a corporation is an option open to corporate investors at their discretion if they no longer wish to put their capital into such an enterprise...for whatever reason. My issue is not whether investors be required to sell a business to demonstrate the depth of conviction of their faith. What I am saying is re-starting their corporation as a not for profit is an option. Shutting the doors and walking away from the business entirely to spite the government or to be consistent with one's convictions is not the only option. Yet many here at SM and elsewhere are prepared to give support to the fanciful notion that the HL investors wind it up and walk away.

Minuteman said: ↑

I applaud the stance of the HL CEO. 1. Close the doors rather than violate their personal religious beliefs. Like I said they are owned by a very devout family and one that puts faith above profits. 2. So much for the all corporations serve mammon position. 3.
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1. Many would agree with your view. Many would not.

2. This bald assertion is fallaciously offered without any evidence to support it. It does not logically follow that devoutness and piety guarantees that investors, CEOs, Board members, management, and employees of a corporation will necessarily conduct a business morally, and ethically, let alone legally. There are many cases of apparently devout and pious men and women in business who have ended up in prison for committing indictable crimes relating to their business dealings...and undoubtedly there are many others not (yet) in jail, whose moral and ethical business practices belie their professed religious faith.

Kent Hovind is still in jail, and he’s going to stay there for a long time – Pharyngula

I seriously question whether the CEO and investors of HL actually do put their faith above profits. Arguably, Some of their business practices would seem to contradict your contention...more on that in another post.

You, as others, seem not to comprehend the fact that that the CEO is not the HL Corporation...the Investors (the Green Family et al) are not the HL corporation, the HL Board of Directors is not the HL Corporation and the Empoyees of HL are not the HL Corporation. Each of these human agents have operational, legal and fiduciary relationships with the HL Corporation, but they are not themselves the HL Corporation. the HL Corporation is one of the co litigants against the Federal Government with regard to the HL Corporation's obligations in respect of the ACA. Not the HL CEO, not the HL Board of Directors, Not the HL investors, and not HL's employees. The HL CEO, investors, and perhaps the Board of Directors don't have standing in the case, but are merely using the HL Corporation as their proxy, even though their wishes and desires and religious convictions may be at odds with the religious liberty and best interests of their employees.

Minuteman · Apr 2, 2014

As usual Chell you are chiming in with gibberish you know nothing about. Trolling looking for a soap box to bloviate from.
Hobby Lobby is NOT a traded public company, they are privately owned. Owned by a devoutly religious family that does not want to be forced to spend their money to provide what they consider abortion pills. A practice that goes against their beliefs and scriptural teachings.

Hobby Lobby is a privately held retail chain of arts and crafts stores based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, and is formally called Hobby Lobby Creative Centers. The company was founded by David Green on August 3, 1972, and as of August 2012 the chain has 561 stores nationwide. Hobby Lobby headquarters are located in a 3,400,000-square-foot (320,000 m2) manufacturing, distribution, and office complex.

In September 2012, Hobby Lobby filed a lawsuit against the United States over new regulations requiring health insurance provided by employers to cover emergency contraceptives, stating that, "(t)he Green family's religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion-causing drugs and devices."[4][5] Hobby Lobby is arguing that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act serve to protect their religious beliefs and accordingly bars the application of the contraceptive mandate to them.

Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and the Green family hailed the filing of 56 supporting friend-of-the-court briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby including one from Congressional supporters of a religious liberty law central to the case. Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby involves the religious objections of Hobby Lobby and its owners, David and Barbara Green and their family. While the Greens' health insurance provides 16 of the 20 contraceptive drugs and devices mandated by the Affordable Care Act, the Greens object to including four because they are potentially life-terminating, in violation of the family's faith. The Greens case reached the nation's higher court after federal appeals court held in favor of the Green family in June 2013. The district court issued an injunction the following month, and in November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case after the federal government appealed. Oral arguments are set for March 25, and a decision is expected by the end of June.

Our Company : Hobby Lobby - Hobby Lobby

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mysterymet · Apr 2, 2014

I agree minuteman! He doesn't understand hobby lobby. Their faith IS their business model. Maybe in Australia there are not large PRIVATELY held companies like that. there is NO board of directors. Green is CEO and his son Steve is the president. Their MINISTRY is a part of their company. Honestly, I think they really might shut down the store rather than comply with providing the morning after pill. That would be a real shame. Also, like I said before so I won't get accusing of being overly religious, I am pro choice and don't usually let my spiritual beliefs influence my political choices. I suggest googling hobby lobby's corporate site and reading up!

bfayer · Apr 2, 2014

I would also point out that even in a publicly traded corporation, no one is ever forced to invest. If they don't like the corporate business model, they can either: sell their interest, give away their interest, buy a majority interest, or convince a majority of the share holders to change the policies they don't like.

This is called freedom of association, and is another natural right that is under assault in this case. The idea that someone can only freely associate for business purposes if they are willing to give up their right to religious freedom is very dangerous. If the government gets to decide what rights you get to keep if you make a profit, then the government controls everything.

kellory · Apr 2, 2014

chelloveck said: ↑

The HL corporation is not being required by the government to close.no, they are refusing to comply with what they believe is wrong, based on their faith. Dissolving a corporation is an option open to corporate investors at their discretion if they no longer wish to put their capital into such an enterprise...for whatever reason.no again. They may buy or sell their portion, according to the contracts they have signed, but someone holding %10 can not decide to desolve the corporation. Just their personal participation. My issue is not whether investors be required to sell a business to demonstrate the depth of conviction of their faith. What I am saying is re-starting their corporation as a not for profit is an option. Shutting the doors and walking away from the business entirely to spite the government or to be consistent with one's convictions is not the only option. HL has all the money they would need to cut and run and take care of all family members for life. (But not their employees) they have a rare opportunity to tell the .Gov to go fuck itself, and could ride out any monitary reprisals. They are standing on principal and few companies do. I applaud them for it, even if their stand does not effect me directly. Reopening as a non profit or a not for profit is a lie, and also would violate their faith. Yet many here at SM and elsewhere are prepared to give support to the fanciful notion that the HL investors wind it up and walk away. They can take their ball and go home, at any time. They own it. To do with it as they will. Their business model is a success by the very assets you felt compelled to cite.

1. Many would agree with your view. Many would not.

2. This bald assertion is fallaciously offered without any evidence to support it. It does not logically follow that devoutness and piety guarantees that investors, CEOs, Board members, management, and employees of a corporation will necessarily conduct a business morally, and ethically, let alone legally. There are many cases of apparently devout and pious men and women in business who have ended up in prison for committing indictable crimes relating to their business dealings...and undoubtedly there are many others not (yet) in jail, whose moral and ethical business practices belie their professed religious faith. Attempting to dab all with the same Tar Brush? not Germaine to what THIS company does or does not do. I could say all KKK members were white(true or not) would it be true then that all whites were KKK members? No, one has no bearing on the other.

Kent Hovind is still in jail, and he’s going to stay there for a long time – Pharyngula

I seriously question whether the CEO and investors of HL actually do put their faith above profits. Arguably, Some of their business practices would seem to contradict your contention...more on that in another post. Cast the first stone, ye that be without sin. (No one is perfect)

You, as others, seem not to comprehend the fact that that the CEO is not the HL Corporation...the Investors (the Green Family et al) are not the HL corporation, the HL Board of Directors is not the HL Corporation and the Empoyees of HL are not the HL Corporation. Each of these human agents have operational, legal and fiduciary relationships with the HL Corporation, but they are not themselves the HL Corporation. the HL Corporation is one of the co litigants against the Federal Government with regard to the HL Corporation's obligations in respect of the ACA. Not the HL CEO, not the HL Board of Directors, Not the HL investors, and not HL's employees. The HL CEO, investors, and perhaps the Board of Directors don't have standing in the case, but are merely using the HL Corporation as their proxy, even though their wishes and desires and religious convictions may be at odds with the religious liberty and best interests of their employees. The wishes, desires and religious convictions of the employees is immaterial. They agreed to existing conditions when they signed aboard. They can leave at anytime their convictions call for that type of response.
It is in the best interest of the employees to have a job, though HL is under NO OBLIGATION to supply them with one. Jobs are a byproduct of businesses speaking profit, NOT the PURPOSE of business. PROFIT is the lifeblood of business, and it's only true purpose to exist. HL, has already met that goal, and could close tomorrow and still be a life time living for all family members.
Money is not the issue. Weather they can be forced to do what they KNOW is WRONG, is the question. The only real answer is NO. The strength of their convictions will determine if they give that answer or chose to allow themselves to be bullied.
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