Justice Samuel Alito, Asshole of the Day for June 30, 2014
The Supreme Court finally decided the Hobby Lobby case today. We highlighted Hobby Lobby CEO David Green previously when it came out that he sued for the right to deny his employees contraceptive care as part of his company's health insurance, even though the very same birth control methods he opposes on religious grounds are part of his investment portfolio. Others pointed out at the time as well that he opposes his employees getting birth control because he believes (incorrectly) that they are really forms of abortion, while he buys all his materials from China, the country which for 30 years has told its citizens to abort any baby after their first.
And the Supreme Court decided that even though Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation, that corporations are people and have religious rights, and so the company can deny its employees contraception on those grounds. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion which explains that:
This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage man-dates, e.g., for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs. Nor does it provide a shield for employers who might cloak illegal discrimination as a religious practice.
...In any event, our decision in these cases is concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious disease) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them.
This is really something. So Alito has given corporations the rights to have religious beliefs (something they did not have previously), and then he limits the decision here to contraception. Other forms of medicine are still allowed to be imposed on religious people, including corporations, just not contraception if the employer decides that they think (even though medical science contradicts them) that it's abortifacient. But religious objections to other things don't matter. It's almost like he's saying that it's OK to deny science and medicine if it oppresses women, but not if religion is used to hide other nefarious purposes, like say deciding they can't get a blood transfusion or vaccine which might affect men too.
So, for giving employers a religious right to meddle in the affairs of women's health and medicine, Justice Alito is the Asshole of the Day.
It is Justice Alito's first time as Asshole of the Day, though not the first Supreme Court justice to be featured here-- that honor belongs to Justice Scalia.
Full story: Right Wing Watch