One more step closer to The Handmaid's Tale.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Next stop:

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

All employees should follow the faith
of their employers - what can more American than that?

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I do wonder what will happen if a Jehovah's Witness owned company wants to exclude blood transfusions from their employees' health insurance. Would the Supremes rule differently if the issue is excluding something they believe is 'life saving?' How about excluding insulin that is derived from pigs for Jewish or Muslim owned firms? Not life saving in the same way as blood because there are other types of insulin available.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Or excluding *all* health care for a company owned by a Christian Scientist or a Scientologist.

It's a stupid decision, that leads to stupid outcomes, and it went on strict 5 faith-based judges versus 4 fact-based judges. This is one of the problems you get when you choose judges based on ideology and not on competence, and it gets worse when there's only two sides, and one *is* picking on competence.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also, you want depressing? Take a look at Harris v Quinn (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-681), also decided today. It's a union-busting case, the short version of which can be summarised "fuck the worker, and fuck the customer. If the company wants to pay peanuts and hire incompetents who will harm the customer in violation of the contract they have with the union, they can." Again, decided 5-4 on faith-based versus fact-based grounds.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So, to be clear, you think the facts involve people who aren't public employees being designated as such and being forced to pay union dues favor the government and not those individuals, and the facts that individuals who run corporations have religious freedom rights under statute favor the government, and not those individuals?

Just want to make sure this is clear.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm trying my best and I still can't parse your sentences in any coherent way.

you think the facts involve people who aren't public employees being designated as such and being forced to pay union dues favor the government and not those individuals,

Can you break that down into something simpler, and possibly also show why you think it "favouring the government" would be a relevant thing, even if it was true?

(FYI: It's not true, it favours the worker and the consumer.)

Same deal here:
the facts that individuals who run corporations have religious freedom rights under statute favor the government, and not those individuals?

That's.... not English, man. Can you try to make that clearer? Maybe try bullet points?

Just want to make sure this is clear.

Indeed. In the mean time, I'll restate my objections, so you have a clearer idea of what you're supposed to be objecting to.

Hobby Lobby: "The owners of a corporation should not be allowed to enforce the tenets of their religion on employees. They get the legal benefits of being a corporation, they accept the legal detriments of being a corporation. That's HOW IT WORKS."

Harris v Quinn: "Health care workers paid for by the government should be held to 'government health care worker' standards and should obey the contracts the government has with their health care workers."

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Being forced to pay Union Dues = Enormously onerous and anti-freedom.

Forcing Unions to negotiate for people who have not payed Union dues = The law of the land.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

The ruling stated that this ruling creates no precedent, therefore suits cannot be brought that relate to blood transfusions/vaccines/prayer care/etc.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

More that suits cannot use this case as precedent if they want to bring suits that relate to those things.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I never thought I'd live to see the SCOTUS rule, in effect, that some Christians are more Christian than other Christians, and that the First Amendment only applies to most Christiany Christians, not those other not-Christiany Christians.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

[stout-john.livejournal.com]

Does this mean they won't cover viagra and those things?

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Of course they will cover Viagra. Cause Viagra doesn't cause abortions. Neither does the birth control they want to exclude, but having a factually wrong belief that it does, if held for religious reasons, is still a reason to deny people medical services.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Men being able to have sex is a right. Women doing so is a privilege.

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

One more step closer to The Handmaid's Tale.

OK Open Carry in the Capitol, and we're just about there...

[madam-shapo.livejournal.com]

You still can pay for your own contraceptives. What's the problem? If you guys, don't want the woman to pay for it, be a gentleman - pay for your female.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Why have medical insurance if it's not going to cover medicine?

[madam-shapo.livejournal.com]

Insurance never covered everything, e.g. aspirin, or caught medicine...

[new-wave-witch.livejournal.com]

You can still pay for your own statin medication too. The problem is having a misinformed reason for denying an employee coverage for a certain kind of preventive medicine and rolling with it.

[madam-shapo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can if my insurance decides not to. What's the big deal? What's that coverage prevents again?

[hurleyman.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly feel like paying for those who need care after an overdoes. Nor do I want to provide care for those involved in drunk driving accidents, or those who choose to play with fireworks and blow half their fingers off. They can always pay for their care to be saved out of their own pockets.

Thankfully it's not up to me to decide what I do and don't want my healthcare deduction going for, as that's not how it works unless you're Christian, it seems.

[new-wave-witch.livejournal.com]

At least this helps demonstrate how stupid it is to maintain a system where people rely on their employer for medical coverage.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Medicare for all! Medicare for all! Medicare for all!
[i wish i had something more to say, but that's it, really.]

[op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly convinced that some folks out there are intentionally using Handmaid's Tale as an instruction guide at this point.

After the past week of a few halfway sensible sounding decisions coming down (the buffer zone case notwithstanding), I just had the almost psychic sense they were preparing to fuck us all as powerfully hard as possible with this one and the public sector union case. Women, nonwhites, low-income people, people belonging to minority religions/no religion and of course all of the above will bear the worst brunt of it, of course, but it's ultimately all of us getting shat upon with this.

And let's be absolutely clear here, this was never about anybody's principled stance against birth control (http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/04/01/hobby-lobby-401k-discovered-to-be-investor-in-numerous-abortion-and-contraception-products-while-claiming-religious-objection/), it was always - first, foremost, and completely - about solidifying the legal "right" of the entity that signs your paycheck to own your ass lock, stock, and bodily fluids.

Fun fact #1: before our local HL occupied the space it does, it used to be a store called Hills, a low end sort of K-Mart chain based on the east coast, for those who never heard of it before it went under. I worked there for 8 months, and it's the one job I flat out walked away from with little or no notice after my direct supervisor (female, no less) told me straight to my face, "We own you" in those exact words. Fun fact #2: that was in mid-1991, shortly before Clarence Thomas' ascension to the SC(R)OTUS, and now he and his 4 "fellow" regressives have effectively codified that into law.

Corporations ain't people till I can kick one straight in the nuts, and if those 5 guys on the court are secretly clamoring for an all-out revolution, complete with guillotines, people being strung up from light poles and blood running through the streets, they certainly seem to be going about it in exactly the right way.