Althouse: "Supremes Saving Worst Decision For Last?" is the big banner headline at HuffPo right now.

June 29, 2014

"Supremes Saving Worst Decision For Last?" is the big banner headline at HuffPo right now.

Tomorrow is the Court's last day of the term, and the "worst decision" HuffPo is stirring its readers up about right now is Hobby Lobby, the case about whether a for-profit corporation is entitled to relief from the "substantial burden" on religion arguably imposed by the Obamacare regulations about contraceptives.

HuffPo doesn't bother to mention that the case is based on a federal statute — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — which Congress could amend and to which Congress could have put an exception in the Affordable Care Act. Except that Congress couldn't do any of those things, and the contraceptive mandate wasn't even something Congress put in the ACA, because Congress only just barely passed the ACA, and an exception from the need to provide religious exemptions would have made the ACA less politically viable, not more.

Which is why — however you feel about birth control, religious objections to it, and for-profit corporations that find a way to be religious — it's not bad for Hobby Lobby to win.

But if it does, the "worst decision" will instantly plunge us into war-on-women, election-year politics.

Why can't I just plunge into my 4th-of-July swimming pool?, you might ask.

No. The internet will never allow you to go back to your summer holiday week as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

20 comments:

Curious George said...: The left care not about the law. Just the outcome. They demonstrate this over, and over, and over.; 6/29/14, 7:40 AM
mishu said...: Your link doesn't show that headline anymore. It must have been changed for being too provocative.; 6/29/14, 8:08 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Your link doesn't show that headline anymore. It must have been changed for being too provocative."

No. I was referring to the banner on the front page. The headline at the linked article was already different.

I've redone the links so that there's a first-one that goes to HuffPo's main page.

Thanks for helping me see that the way I did the links caused a misimpression.; 6/29/14, 8:17 AM
TML said...: Nice:

No. The internet will never allow you to go back to your summer holiday week as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.; 6/29/14, 8:47 AM
Michael K said...: HuffPo is an interesting collection of readers. I never knew there was such a large constituency for magical thinking in this country. I'm impressed.

They are the example of what the Obama voters who have no regrets sound like.; 6/29/14, 9:21 AM
sinz52 said...: Some other liberals are pointing to Harris v. Quinn (also due tomorrow) as the worst (for them) Supreme Court ruling.

Harris v. Quinn concerns whether a union can compel nonunion members to pay dues, even if said union engages in political activism that the nonunion members do not support.

Plantiffs (the nonunion members) charge that unions compelling them to pay dues violates the First Amendment if part of those dues goes to political activism that the nonunion members oppose.; 6/29/14, 9:26 AM
Original Mike said...: "The internet will never allow you to go back to your summer holiday week as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Impeach the internet!; 6/29/14, 9:37 AM
richard mcenroe said...: Why does no one complain about the Muslim exempotions from ACA?; 6/29/14, 10:16 AM
Sam L. said...: Well, it IS the PuffHo, and we know what rock they crawled out from under.; 6/29/14, 10:42 AM
YoungHegelian said...: From the "sub" headline at the link: FEAR: Businesses Could Dodge Laws Due to 'Religious Liberty'

Because, we can't have a little thing like 'Freedom of Conscience' get in the way of us telling people what to do now, can we?

These folks are truly scary some times. Actually, a lot of the times.; 6/29/14, 11:40 AM
chillblaine said...: 5-4 against plaintiff. Kennedy will reason that some religious beliefs are extreme. For example, what if a business owned by Orthodox Jews requires its female employees to take a mikveh every month. Or what if a Muslim cab driver were forced to pick up unaccompanied females. Arizona could already see the inherent potential abuses in RFRA when they backed down from their extension.; 6/29/14, 11:50 AM
PackerBronco said...: If Hobby Lobby wins, look for the Left to claim that the Supreme Court wants to make contraception illegal.

One of the basic beliefs of the Left is that there can be no freedom until everything is free. Thus if you have to pay for your own contraception, you really aren't free to have it.; 6/29/14, 1:36 PM
n.n said...: I can imagine the screeching if a decision was made to protect the rights of human life throughout its evolution. The defenders of abortion would be apoplectic. Now that would be a judgment worth following.

Forcing others to pay for your sexual liaisons. Not that much.

On the other hand, taxing life, sex, etc., may be the first step in a new regulatory regime.

Get out of my bedroom! Sorry, breathing, sex, etc. are taxable activities.

Wasn't their a movie from the 80s where human life, through its evolution, from conception to death, was completely regulated by an authoritarian minority? Life imitates art.; 6/29/14, 2:38 PM
CJinPA said...: Vote Democrat, get more sex and money.

Crude, but it works.; 6/29/14, 4:13 PM
Anonymous said...: 6 - 3 for Hobby Lobby. Even Bryer didn't buy the Fed's BS during oral arguments. And IIRC, Bryer's old enough to remember that RFRA was a leftie law, to protect minority religions. He's not going to want to destroy it.; 6/29/14, 5:57 PM
Anonymous said...: "If Hobby Lobby wins, look for the Left to claim that the Supreme Court wants to make contraception illegal."

You called it. Already seeing that on my Facebook feed. Amazing how overwrought the hyperbole and exaggeration gets, isn't it?; 6/30/14, 10:45 AM
Xmas said...: Chillblaine,

Muslim drivers already refuse to pick up people with service dogs or who are carrying alchohol...

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2827800; 6/30/14, 12:06 PM
Anonymous said...: PackerBronco: One of the basic beliefs of the Left is that there can be no freedom until everything is free.

Some may be tempted to dismiss this as right-wing cant. Such people are unfamiliar with F. D. Roosevelt's four freedoms, of which #3 is "Freedom from want." "Roosevelt endorsed a broader human right to economic security..." and this particular magical thinking—that economic security is a human right, and therefore must be provided by someone, and by extension can be provided by someone—remains the #1-with-a-bullet memetic virus of the left, justifying the comparatively-soft totalitarianism of the "progressive" movement of the 20th century in much of the west, and its obviously more explicit variants in the Soviet Union, Latin America, and southeast Asia.

Now, even though each and every one of those experiments has failed spectacularly, and the death toll is in the hundreds of millions, we have still not relegated this memetic virus to the cold storage of the CDC, à la Smallpox. It remains the principle infestation of the left, to all of our detriment.; 6/30/14, 1:31 PM
Sigivald said...: If HuffPo mentioned the RFRA, people might notice that the 103rd Congress that passed it in 1993 did so almost unanimously ... with a strong Democrat majority.

And that Bill Clinton signed it into law.

Which would be counterproductive to the desired effect on readers.

(Contra chillblaine above, the decision itself says, IIRC, that the reason HobbyLobby won here is that DHS didn't use the least-invasive means of furthering the admittedly legitimate end in question.

Strict scrutiny requires more than DHS did here. There's no blanket "anything you say Religion to is OK!" as imagined by such responses.); 6/30/14, 1:59 PM
zregime said...: So much cynicism! Come on people, crack a Leinie's and take a chug and yell out Woo HOO! Justice is served!! This is still a Constitutional Republic! Gimme one of them Leinies! Damn, man...get happy!!!; 6/30/14, 7:12 PM