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Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge[W:513,870]

Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
I never said that, but please make up your own strawman. What I was pointing out is there are many types of contraception not 'readily accessible' to some women, especially poor women. Can they buy condoms with a high failure rate? Yes. Can they afford the $1,000 for an IUD and more for the doctor visit? Not if they're poor.

The cost of birth control: By the numbers - The Week

And there are many good reasons to include contraception as part of health insurance. Same reason there are good reasons to include pills for high blood pressure as part of health insurance, or drugs for high cholesterol, etc. I pointed some out, which ones do you disagree with?
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Yep and this ruling has nothing to do with high blood pressure pills or any other medication. it strictly deals with private family businesses and birth control.

you are strawmaning the conversation but please continue.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

maquiscat said:
Any claim that they would make based upon Sharia would have to be in regards to what they would provide or do, but not what an employee could do outside the workplace. So they could make women who worked in their company wear burkas while on the job but they could not enforce that rule outside of the workplace. The same principle is what is being applied to HL. HL is not going to provide what they do not religiously support, but they aren't even trying to stop women from getting what they want on their own.
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Yes, that's all true.

But I guess I'm a little unclear about what the point is. I guess as a libertarian you object outright any employer regulations, so I'm hesitant to start any debate with that as the starting point. But 'what they provide or do' in the workplace is broad enough to include gender based discrimination of any kind, including a head covering, or requiring women to have male escorts in public, refusing to promote them to a position where they'd be supervising men, etc. I'd oppose that, I guess you'd say the women should find another place to work.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

Top Cat said:
Yes Vance I can hear you gnashing your teeth and stomping your feet. Surprised it took you so long. Just keep your religion out of my government.
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nope justices upheld the 1st amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
no religion entered the government. the SCOTUS was doing it's job and protecting peoples religious views and practices.

please see the first amendment if you have any issues.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
Yes, that's all true.

But I guess I'm a little unclear about what the point is. I guess as a libertarian you object outright any employer regulations, so I'm hesitant to start any debate with that as the starting point. But 'what they provide or do' in the workplace is broad enough to include gender based discrimination of any kind, including a head covering, or requiring women to have male escorts in public, refusing to promote them to a position where they'd be supervising men, etc. I'd oppose that, I guess you'd say the women should find another place to work.
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HL already offers birth control so what is your problem?
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
The court says it does apply to closely held corporations but it does not say that the ruling does NOT or cannot apply to publicly held corps, only that it's less likely and none have made a claim so far. But what if a Saudi buys 50.01% of a public company? Can they make a claim based on Sharia? Who knows, but there is nothing in the ruling preventing such a claim under RFRA.
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It's like I always say, time will tell. those who disagree with the ruling usually are all doom and gloom and put forth the most worst case scenario as the path we are headed down and the other side is all happy and full of joy thinking the whole has changed for the better with just one ruling. But in the end, in most cases not much changes as 99.9% of us are left uneffected.

Now there are rulings that do effect close to everyone, but I highly doubt this was one of them.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Poor women are covered by Medicaid, are they not? The ruling won't impact Medicaid. It impacts certain corporations only.
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Poor women working for HL would be covered by HL's insurance, as would be their dependents, some of them adults. They wouldn't have a Medicaid supplemental policy. It could be that for them and others denied coverage for religious reason that the regs for ACA will be changed to require insurers to offer contraceptives free of charge, but I read yesterday that some employers object to that arrangement, because they have to make a positive step to make that coverage available to their employees and they object to making that positive step.

We'll see what happens, I guess, but I'm not sure what's hard about accepting that denying coverage for something by insurance has an effect on the 'access' to that denied product or service, especially by poor women. It's the whole point of these religious objections. If HL's denial of coverage in fact has no effect at all on contraceptive use or access, then they're expending an immense amount of effort on an empty gesture. It's possible that's all they're doing, but it seems completely irrational to me.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Actually the ruling wasn't even based on the First Amendment. It was based on RFRA, which was signed into law by Clinton in 1993.
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Ah, I didn't realize that.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
Poor women working for HL would be covered by HL's insurance, as would be their dependents, some of them adults. They wouldn't have a Medicaid supplemental policy. It could be that for them and others denied coverage for religious reason that the regs for ACA will be changed to require insurers to offer contraceptives free of charge, but I read yesterday that some employers object to that arrangement, because they have to make a positive step to make that coverage available to their employees and they object to making that positive step.

We'll see what happens, I guess, but I'm not sure what's hard about accepting that denying coverage for something by insurance has an effect on the 'access' to that denied product or service, especially by poor women. It's the whole point of these religious objections. If HL's denial of coverage in fact has no effect at all on contraceptive use or access, then they're expending an immense amount of effort on an empty gesture. It's possible that's all they're doing, but it seems completely irrational to me.
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Do you know how many poor women working for Hobby Lobby were impacted by this decision? Or how many HL employees by definition are poor?

I don't think anything noteworthy will happen. Sure there will be appeals, but as long as the RFRA stays on the books, the case is closed. And most people will never feel any impact from this decision.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Do you know how many poor women working for Hobby Lobby were impacted by this decision?
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If it's more than zero, then it's one too many.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

Amadeus said:
If it's more than zero, then it's one too many.
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In other words, you don't know. Nor do we.

I think if people are really worried about however many women are impacted by this decision, they should band together, pool their money, and buy them the 4 forms of BC that they were paying for for decades before the ACA anyway. Or of course the employees can find work at another retail store - there are plenty of those.

The RFRA was a clear law. The ACA violated the RFRA. The HHS lawyers should have done a little research.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Poor people are covered by Medicaid. This ruling doesn't impact poor people. In fact, it only impacts the HL employees.
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Yes you said that. I guess you understand that there are millions of working poor, and many of HL's hourly employees will be in that group. Furthermore, the ruling doesn't just apply to HL (which pays well above minimum wage) and the other named defendants - dozens of businesses have sued to not provide coverage and presumably dozens or perhaps thousands more private employers will elect to do so following the ruling.

There are 16 forms of birth control still available to women who work at HL. Which of the 4 drugs that HL won't provide are prescribed for blood pressure and blood sugar? I'm diabetic, and know all about what meds are prescribed to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. The IUD isn't one of them.
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I've noticed you have a habit of apparently deliberately missing the point. Here's my response last night to an earlier question you posed to me. The part in bold is a direct quote to which I originally responded, and that's the issue at hand:

2) "There is no reason whatsoever to make them [contraceptives] part of health insurance" - they're a basic part of healthcare for women, and an integral part. For some women, pregnancy can be life threatening because of medical conditions, and effective contraception is medically important. In those cases, and in cases where contraception is used for reasons other than pregnancy protection, they're as necessary to be covered by health insurance as antibiotics or drugs for blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. And that's if you don't accept prescription drugs/devices for pregnancy prevention and planning for pregnancies as a damn fine reason to include them as part of health insurance, like almost all other prescription drugs/devices.
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And, again, HL has agreed to provide 16. The ruling covers HL and all other similarly situated employers, some of whom will presumably cover 0 of the 20. At least that possibility is probable, not remote.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
That may be practically true, but the ruling didn't set any limits on who can file these claims. It certainly didn't specify any kind of 'closely held' test that anyone can identify. What if a Saudi buys 50.01% of Bank of America? Can it make a claim based on Sharia? Who knows?
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I believe there were some criteria laid out.
And yes, if an employer meets the criteria then they would qualify.
That's as it should be.
You seem to agree with the Obama school of thought that if he believes something should be, and if laws & the Constitution are against it, and if Congress disagrees too, then that's what Executive Actions are for.
This ruling doesn't in any way prevent the employee from getting whatever they need elsewhere.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
Poor women working for HL would be covered by HL's insurance, as would be their dependents, some of them adults. They wouldn't have a Medicaid supplemental policy. It could be that for them and others denied coverage for religious reason that the regs for ACA will be changed to require insurers to offer contraceptives free of charge, but I read yesterday that some employers object to that arrangement, because they have to make a positive step to make that coverage available to their employees and they object to making that positive step.

We'll see what happens, I guess, but I'm not sure what's hard about accepting that denying coverage for something by insurance has an effect on the 'access' to that denied product or service, especially by poor women. It's the whole point of these religious objections. If HL's denial of coverage in fact has no effect at all on contraceptive use or access, then they're expending an immense amount of effort on an empty gesture. It's possible that's all they're doing, but it seems completely irrational to me.
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you keep using poor this is nothing more than an appeal to emotion.

they argued the RFRA which was passed by clinton.
It did not pass the sniff test of the RFRA.

the law required that all contraceptives be made available. for catholics that do not believe in birth control at all this is a major issue. for HL it was 4 forms of contraception that they had issues with.

the SCOTUS simply said that the government cannot force companies to pay for birth control that violates there religious beliefs and it applies to contrasceptives and no other medical procedures.

standing up for ones beliefs and freedoms is not irrational in fact it is fully rational.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
Yes you said that. I guess you understand that there are millions of working poor, and many of HL's hourly employees will be in that group. Furthermore, the ruling doesn't just apply to HL (which pays well above minimum wage) and the other named defendants - dozens of businesses have sued to not provide coverage and presumably dozens or perhaps thousands more private employers will elect to do so following the ruling.



I've noticed you have a habit of apparently deliberately missing the point. Here's my response last night to an earlier question you posed to me. The part in bold is a direct quote to which I originally responded, and that's the issue at hand:



And, again, HL has agreed to provide 16. The ruling covers HL and all other similarly situated employers, some of whom will presumably cover 0 of the 20. At least that possibility is probable, not remote.
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How many of the HL employees are poor? How many demanded these 4 drugs? If there is no data on that, we're discussing something that neither one of us knows about.

The requirement of providing abortion-causing birth control violated the RFRA which is a law that has existed since 1993. If that's a bad law, then change it. The ACLU was one of the biggest advocates of the RFRA when Clinton signed it into law in 1993. The decision was very black and white here.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
In other words, you don't know. Nor do we.
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It shouldn't impact anyone, even hypothetically.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Do you know how many poor women working for Hobby Lobby were impacted by this decision? Or how many HL employees by definition are poor?

I don't think anything noteworthy will happen. Sure there will be appeals, but as long as the RFRA stays on the books, the case is closed. And most people will never feel any impact from this decision.
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No, I don't know. Do you know how many women working for HL or the approximately half the working population in small, family owned firms who will be affected and who are part of the millions of working poor? Do you assume that number is positive?

As an aside, I'm not quite sure why you keep pretending that the only people impacted are the employees of one corporation. Dozens have sued for the same right HL sued - to deny coverage for contraceptives. This ruling is much broader than just HL and the other named plaintiffs. Surely this is obvious, right?
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
No, I don't know. Do you know how many women working for HL or the approximately half the working population in small, family owned firms who will be affected and who are part of the millions of working poor? Do you assume that number is positive?

As an aside, I'm not quite sure why you keep pretending that the only people impacted are the employees of one corporation. Dozens have sued for the same right HL sued - to deny coverage for contraceptives. This ruling is much broader than just HL and the other named plaintiffs. Surely this is obvious, right?
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I have no idea how many people will not live well without those 4 specific forms of BC being provided in their employer-sponsored healthcare insurance plans. This is the first time I'm finding out that it's a crisis. Women have been paying out of pocket for them for decades before the ACA was passed.

why don't you lobby your Congressman to overturn the RFRA? That's the law that made the SCOTUS decision end up being what it is. It seems to really bother you. It didn't bother me in 1993 and it doesn't bother me today. Birth control paid for by insurance? I have to admit, it isn't my biggest worry in my life.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
Do you not know about RFRA, which was the law that SCOTUS applied to this decision?

I suggest some research on RFRA. It was signed into law by Clinton in 1993. Do you want to know the main reason RFRA came into being? It was to protect the Native Americans (remember - the people who had you all worked up last week, worrying about their rights and thoughts on that trademark thing?). RFRA was intended to keep the government from intruding on Native Americans' sacred land. Everyone from the ACLU to the Catholic Church supported RFRA.

All of a sudden, Ginsburg - who was an ACLU attorney who supported RFRA - has an issue with its application. She launches into an hysterical hypothetical about gelatin, pigs, and transfusions. How realistic do you think it is that people will all of a sudden not get blood transfusions covered by their insurance? Good grief.

HHS made a decision to force all employers to offer 20 forms of birth control to their employees in their insurance. HHS disregarded RFRA, and SCOTUS (the honest ones) upheld RFRA< which again was signed into law by Bill Clinton.

So the ones who made up **** willy nilly were the dissenters, not the ones who ruled in favor of it. Ginsburg supported a law in 1993 that she chose to ignore in 2014.
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I don't think congress meant or intended the RFRA law to include corporate "personhood".


The SCOTUS failed to prove how the ACA burdened or prevented the individual owners of HL from exercising their religion. Instead the SCOTUS seems to have singled out a group of people for corporations to discriminate against.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

Amadeus said:
This is what Obama gets for trying to compromise. He should have gone with true Socialized Medicine, which would have avoided this situation.
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He did try, remember? He and other liberals wanted a single payer option but he couldn't get it past moderate Democrats.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
How many of the HL employees are poor? How many demanded these 4 drugs? If there is no data on that, we're discussing something that neither one of us knows about.

The requirement of providing abortion-causing birth control violated the RFRA which is a law that has existed since 1993. If that's a bad law, then change it. The ACLU was one of the biggest advocates of the RFRA when Clinton signed it into law in 1993. The decision was very black and white here.
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I think I'll quit going down the same rathole with you. If you want to respond to the points I made, then do so, but it's tiring as heck that you ask a question, I respond, you ignore the response, repeat the same question, or move the goal posts to something else. It's a not entertaining version of whack a mole.

And the decision was hardly 'black and white.' It was 5-4, and the Appeals courts were split, which required the SC to rule to settle the conflict at the Appeals Court level. Legal experts have been debating the issue for months, with dozens of very sharp attorneys and groups submitting briefs on both sides of the issue. To get to the ruling the Court had to make about four conclusions in favor of the plaintiffs, and every one of them was in dispute, requiring subjective applications of the law and precedent to the facts of this case, and if any had fallen the other way, the ruling goes in favor of HHS. Furthermore, the limited nature of the ruling testifies to the gray area of law this ruling treads in. Were the issues clear, there would be ZERO reason to limit the effect of the ruling to this narrow set of facts, as Alito made great pains to do.

You're not even trying to be objective with crap like that.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

JasperL said:
Poor women working for HL would be covered by HL's insurance, as would be their dependents, some of them adults. They wouldn't have a Medicaid supplemental policy. It could be that for them and others denied coverage for religious reason that the regs for ACA will be changed to require insurers to offer contraceptives free of charge, but I read yesterday that some employers object to that arrangement, because they have to make a positive step to make that coverage available to their employees and they object to making that positive step.

We'll see what happens, I guess, but I'm not sure what's hard about accepting that denying coverage for something by insurance has an effect on the 'access' to that denied product or service, especially by poor women. It's the whole point of these religious objections. If HL's denial of coverage in fact has no effect at all on contraceptive use or access, then they're expending an immense amount of effort on an empty gesture. It's possible that's all they're doing, but it seems completely irrational to me.
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Hobby Lobby isn't trying to deny contraceptives to everyone. They are surely aware that women will still get contraceptives whether they provide them or not. They just didn't want to be the ones providing them. That was the whole point; it's a religious objection. That doesn't make it an "empty gesture".
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
I have no idea how many people will not live well without those 4 specific forms of BC being provided in their employer-sponsored healthcare insurance plans. This is the first time I'm finding out that it's a crisis. Women have been paying out of pocket for them for decades before the ACA was passed.

why don't you lobby your Congressman to overturn the RFRA? That's the law that made the SCOTUS decision end up being what it is. It seems to really bother you. It didn't bother me in 1993 and it doesn't bother me today. Birth control paid for by insurance? I have to admit, it isn't my biggest worry in my life.
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I just have to laugh. You quote me saying this, "As an aside, I'm not quite sure why you keep pretending that the only people impacted are the employees of one corporation. Dozens have sued for the same right HL sued - to deny coverage for contraceptives. This ruling is much broader than just HL and the other named plaintiffs. Surely this is obvious, right?" and then right below it you repeat the same thing I've challenged you on several times now, which is pretending this ruling ONLY applies to HL and that ALL the other employers suing to not provide contraception will choose to provide for 16 and not zero.

It's just amazing to watch the dishonest way you conduct a debate.
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

LowDown said:
Hobby Lobby isn't trying to deny contraceptives to everyone. They are surely aware that women will still get contraceptives whether they provide them or not. They just didn't want to be the ones providing them. That was the whole point; it's a religious objection. That doesn't make it an "empty gesture".
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A bogus religious objection:

67169043d1404185976-supreme-court-backs-hobby-lobby-contraceptive-mandate-challenge-w-513-hobbylobby.jpg
 
Re: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge

tres borrachos said:
How many of the HL employees are poor?
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How many demanded these 4 drugs? If there is no data on that,
we're discussing something that neither one of us knows about.
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The requirement of providing abortion-causing birth control violated the RFRA which is a law that has existed since 1993. If that's a bad law, then change it. The ACLU was one of the biggest advocates of the RFRA when Clinton signed it into law in 1993. The decision was very black and white here.
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I heard somewhere that HL pays double the minimum wage.
It's a War On Women, doncha know.
 
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