UPDATE: Attempts to Limit Hobby Lobby Turn Out To Be Gibberish

So my previous post was about how the way Justice Alito distinguishes the contraceptive mandate from other potential health insurance tells us that the real point of his opinion is that he doesn't think it's that important to provide universal access to contraception. Apparently that's not entirely correct. Apparently the Court assumed that the government interest in the case was compelling, and based its decision on the whole "least restrictive means" thing. But this is a problem. RFRA violations are those laws which substantially burden religion and which are not the least restrictive means to further a compelling government interest. Thus, if one thing is a RFRA violation and another isn't, then they must differ in one of three ways: either one of them substantially burdens religion and the other doesn't, or one of them is in furtherance of a compelling interest and the other isn't, or one of them is the least restrictive means to furthering such an interest and the other isn't. It could be all of those three, but it's gotta be at least one of 'em. But if Alito was stipulating the strength of the government's interest, then that can't be the difference. The fact that, in the passage quoted in the previous post, he discussed not the question of the burden on religion but of the government's interest suggests he thinks that vaccine mandates do substantially burden religion, so that can't be the difference. So the difference must be the least-restrictive-means thing, right? Well, wrong. Because as Justice Kennedy points out, the government could just pay for this part itself. That would be less burdensome on the Green family's religion. So would establishing an all-out single payer system where the government just does all of this stuff directly and leaves the employers out of it. And both of those are gonna be there as less restrictive alternatives for all of these mandates, aren't they? Like, the logic is in fact exactly the same, Alito's protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

So.... it looks like the "legal reasoning" behind limiting this to contraception is basically just bullshit. There is no reasoning. It's narrow because Alito wants it to be narrow, as do Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas. Maybe because they think Congress might actually amend RFRA or something if they issued a broader decision? I dunno. But it seems pretty likely that the only reason why they're treating contraception differently from all other kinds of potential health insurance mandates is that it's suddenly become politically controversial, and/or that they're five old Catholic dudes who have been taught from birth to believe that contraception is sinful. Whatever it is, it ain't law.