I Don't Understand the Hobby Lobby Case

I Don’t Understand the Hobby Lobby Case

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            It was a simple case the Supreme Court ruled upon in regards to Hobby Lobby.  It must have been because everyone on Twitter and Facebook described in such easy terms what the decision should have been.  Unfortunately for me it was more complex than I could get my thoughts to surround.  I found myself singing those lyrics by Warren Zevon made famous once upon a time by Linda Ronstadt.  I was rubbing my head over how I couldn't understand this simple case to the point that I began to mutter “Poor, poor pitiful me.”

            My conservative friends assured me it was a simple case of religious liberty for a man who owned a company.  Pro-life friends said this was a case of one's convictions that should not be ruled against by the government.  My progressive friends regarded this as a case of a corporation stifling their employees rights to health care as stipulated by national law.  I understood that surely someone's claims upon liberty were going to be upheld and another's claim was going to be rejected.

            I didn't hear many on either side asking who it is that owns the jobs we do.  I know a number of Conservatives who speak as if an owner offers and owns the jobs and decides whom he will keep and whom he will dismiss.  But someone somewhere once told me that employers and employees share ownership of a job.  There are varieties of ways this shared ownership takes place.  There are agreements between a business owner and an individual which are expressly agreed upon contracts; some are written contracts, and some are simply implied agreements.  At what point does an owner of a company's religious freedoms give that owner an ability to deny to an employee a benefit the employee was apparently granted through national legislation?  Who owns the jobs and who may determine benefits packages when religious conviction is opposed to national legislation?  I didn't quite see how simple this Supreme Court decision was.

            What sort of corporations or individuals ought to be able to claim a religious conviction which results in limiting and redefining our nation’s laws on health plans?  How varied are the corporations we recognize under American law?  We recognize that not every corporation is a publically held corporation with shares marketable to the public.  Some corporations exist as privately held companies and are described by a distinct status known as "closely held."  The laws of our land have distinguished publically held corporations from the much more private "closely held" examples of corporations.  Is it important in protecting liberties to distinguish between a corporation "closely held" by a small group of persons with shared faith and convictions or should the distinction between "closely held" and "publically held" corporations be eliminated?  Should the Supreme Court simply sweep away the distinction by its ability to make a determination in an instance of judicial review?  Are we willing to recognize that some issues have not yet been determined unto a realistic societal consensus and so should be allowed certain freedom of action at a less than nationalized level?  Or must law be in each and every instance a universal command affecting all individuals and entities equally regardless of personal conviction?  Might it not be actually to the benefit of society to allow variation of practices regarding issues not yet determined by a definite general consensus of the governed?  Poor, poor pitiful me it doesn't seem like such a simple case to me.

            I find this case to be anything but simple, but that is just me.  But then I see in my mind a scene from a classic movie from the 1960's.  The actor is playing the person of Sir Thomas More in the movie "A Man for all Seasons."  Everyone around him has a simple way of making everything better.  But this imperfect man of law argues for the complexity of a nation filled with laws.  He resists those who would simplify the system of laws and clear down the forests of encumbrances to what seems obviously needed to be done.  He argues for the imperfection of man's laws over the perfections of God's laws or our ideals.  Does he have a point.  He seems to make a fine point in my confusion, but I'll let you watch and ponder and you can answer for yourself if his concerns are wise concerns.  Please watch and listen to the argument expressed by the actor portraying Sir Thomas More in “A Man for all Seasons.”

            “The Devil and the Law” from “A Man for all Seasons”

            The truth is that mankind's gradual work of creating laws which protect both liberty and justice ends up being a gradual messy business.  If an individual strives and pursues enlightenment and struggles to make himself as near to perfection as he can, then so does a society and a nation through the laws it creates.  Some laws are created to express the agreed upon consensus and some laws are as well created to allow the expression and practice of variation and dissent.  It is through such laws that human society is protected even if in the process the devil is given the benefit of law.  Is this so much different from how God rules over the righteous and the evil by granting sunshine and showers equally upon both?  Or must we think of law only as the expression of the perfect no matter how many voices of dissent must be crushed in the process?  Who among us should wish for ourselves the power to cut down all the trees under which the devil would find a hiding place?  Or should we be more concerned that if ever we were able to cut down all the trees in the creation that the winds that blew in upon us would leave us neither a windbreak from the winds or shade from hot summer sun?  So I am content that today the Supreme Court made a very specific and limited ruling giving some leeway to specifically designed sort of corporation known as a "closely held" corporation the ability to dissent for conscience' sake from a specifically limited provision in the national health legislation.  The court neither destroyed the national health care act nor did it answer all the potential details of the ongoing struggle between national policy and individual conscience.  If the court cut down a tree in the ruling it left the forest.  But I say this not understanding the case whatsoever.