Companies are granted the right to refuse to hire certain female prospects if the owners have religious objections to mothers working outside the home.
Companies are granted the right to fire pregnant employees because the owner finds their presence distracting.
Are those rights fair? Should they be granted? How far are we as a nation willing to let religion rule what someone can or cannot do? Will we let it go to a level that becomes downright discriminatory?
A simple fight to gain the right to refuse to pay for something that goes against your religious belief could open many unforeseen doors that could play host to discrimination.
Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could undercut these and other workplace protections by giving businesses a new constitutional right to discriminate against their employees at a religious level.
This case, Sibelius v. Hobby Lobby, challenges the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer-provided health care must include contraceptive coverage.
Hobby Lobby, a for-profit corporation owned by a religious family, claims this requirement violates its First Amendment right to freedom of religion as well as its rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Regardless of what they are trying to accomplish with this case, the ramifications of a win are fairly substantial.
This win could quickly go from not covering contraception due to religious beliefs to firing an employee because he or she is gay, a right many religious employers would prefer.
If a company can fire an employee because he or she is gay and the owners have religious views that disagree with that sexual orientation, we would see a giant leap backwards in the fight for equality for all.
While legislation on gay rights is still evolving, this win for Hobby Lobby would bode poorly for many.
Largely, this case is about female employees’ right to birth control. The owners are seeking to impose their religious beliefs about contraception on all of the company’s 22,000 employees and their families.
According to their religion, many of the forms of contraception they are supposed to cover, such as Plan B and IUDs, end human life, practices that are dead wrong in their belief.
While it is true with the wages Hobby Lobby pays its employees, even those on the bottom rung of the totem pole should be able to afford contraception out of their own pocket, it is the ramifications of this that have many worried.
Hobby Lobby officials say religious participation is optional for its 22,000 employees. “If they don’t believe in God, we love them where they are” says Dianna Bradley, the company’s director of chaplain services.
So if they are saying that their employees don’t have to be religious, not that they could legally discriminate on that anyway, then why are they pushing the issue of what their non-religion-sharing employees do with the health care that the Affordable Care Act elicits that they provide?
Bottom line is if this case rules in favor of Hobby Lobby, it opens the door to myriad religious objections.
We have to draw a line somewhere, or anyone can discriminate against anyone just because of some sort of “religious belief.”
Perhaps the best answer to this is for Hobby Lobby to not provide health care for their employees, in turn dumping them on the exchanges, which is the design of the Affordable Care Act anyway.
While the owners of Hobby Lobby are entitled to their beliefs, a win for them could mean some interesting affects on the rest of the nation.
Like stated before, soon we could see employees being let go for being gay, pregnant, or even of the wrong religion. Sacrebleu!
I can already see Catholic owners firing Mormon employees because of… you get my gist.
