As if we needed it, this is even further proof that the logic supposedly limiting this decision is utter crap. The really radical thing about the decision is its basically just assumption that the contraception mandate was a substantial burden on the exercise of these companies' religion. (Of course, attributing their owners' religious beliefs to those companies is also radical, but whatever, that ship sank a while ago.) Because, you see, the acts which violate these religious beliefs was not being undertaken by the holders of said beliefs. They were being taken by said believers' employees, using the health insurance which said believers were required by law to provide. So unless freedom of religion literally means being able to impose your own religious law on everyone you come in contact with or have any sort of professional relationship with, which, uhhhh, I hope it doesn't, it's a little tough to see what the problem is. This is particularly true given that, under the law, the employers could just decline to provide insurance altogether, and pay the federal government a fee probably smaller than the cost of the insurance they're now not paying, which the government will use to help provide insurance to the employees.
But, as I understood it, the logic behind saying that, despite all of this, the employers' religion was being substantially burdened is that abortion, including the "abortion" of a one-cell zygote or whatever, is considered murder full and proper by these religious groups, and that therefore it's deeply against their conscience to have any involvement in such murders. But I'm pretty sure we can't extend that logic to things that aren't viewed as murder, but rather just as being more mundanely sinful. I don't think it's really possible to claim that having to have any remotely tangential involvement in the commission of a sin--that the other people were going to commit anyway!--violates your religious beliefs. Unless we're just living deep in crazy-land. Which apparently we are. Because apparently now, as Kevin Drum says, "just about anything that Catholics consider a sin for Catholics is justification for opting out of federal regulation." When those sins are being committed by others.
I mean seriously. I can't even... There's just really not a lot to say. My title for this article, like, it sounds like a farce. It sounds like a goddamn Onion article, and it's not! This understanding of what "substantially burdens" a religion is going to cause absolute chaos for federal law, I predict. I really don't see how this logic can possibly fail to include things like vaccines and blood transfusions and the like, as Ginsburg's dissent predicted. Note that Alito only said they hadn't already decided those cases, not that they would eventually decide them differently. Of course, he did say that racial discrimination isn't within the same principle, but it wouldn't surprise me if this doesn't stop very short of there, or maybe (if the Justices are feeling generous) employment discrimination of other kinds. We kind of have a strong precedent, from the pre-Smith era no less, saying that religion doesn't get you out of paying Social Security taxes, but I'm not 100% sure that should be viewed as good law anymore the way things are going.
This is a really despair-inducing decision. And this, even though the actual impact of this actual case is going to be pretty limited. Bloody hell.
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