Jurist Prudence

If there was a moment in yesterday's Supreme Court oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case where things got weird, convoluted, and political, it was when Justice Elena Kagan quoted Justice Antonin Scalia's own arguments from 1990 on why your boss's religious views should not affect employees:

During oral arguments Tuesday about the validity of Obamacare's birth control mandate, Justice Elena Kagan cleverly echoed Justice Antonin Scalia's past warning that religious-based exceptions to neutral laws could lead to "anarchy."

"Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard," she told Paul Clement, the lawyer arguing against the mandate for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. "So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative."

Kagan's remarks might sound familiar to the legally-trained ear. In a 1990 majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia alluded to the same examples of what might happen if religious entities are permitted to claim exemptions from generally applicable laws. He warned that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."

Of course, that was 24 years ago when the President was a Republican, so this time around those religious exceptions to a law a Democratic president signed into law are necessary, in Scalia's eyes.   But in 1990, he wisely wrote of "slippery slope" arguments.

"The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," Scalia wrote in the 6-3 opinion, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."

In other words, if Hobby Lobby is allowed to except itself from Obamacare's mandate, what can't it except itself from?  That's the golden ticket..