America got a bit closer toward theocracy today with two SCOTUS decisions on your employer's religion trumping your own, with your employer now able to deny you health care coverage and oh yes, your job, based entirely on their "closely-held" religious beliefs.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to give the nation's employers more leeway in refusing to provide free birth control for their workers under the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling is a victory for the administration's plan to greatly expand the kinds of employers who can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include contraceptives in their health care plans.
Up to 126,000 women nationwide would lose birth control coverage under President Donald Trump's plan, the government estimated. Planned Parenthood said nearly nine in 10 women seek contraceptive care of some kind during their lifetimes.
The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, gives the government authority to create the religious and moral objections, said Justice Clarence Thomas for the court's 7-2 majority.
The Department of Health and Human Services "has virtually unbridled discretion to decide what counts as preventive care and screenings," and that same authority "leaves its discretion equally unchecked in other areas, including the ability to identify and create exemptions from its own guidelines," he said.
In dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said the court in the past has struck a balance in religious freedom cases, so that the beliefs of some do not overwhelm the rights of others.
"Today for the first time, the court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree" and "leaves women workers to fend for themselves" in seeking contraceptive services, they said.
Women’s groups condemned the ruling. The National Women’s Law Center said more than 61 million women get birth control coverage through Obamacare.
It's going to be zero if the GOP gets its way, as the ACA won't exist, which is another issue, but Thomas's ruling basically states that the government should be making these moral and legal objections on behalf of employers.
Are employers going to have to opt-in to birth control coverage now because the Trump regime can now assume employers object unless they say otherwise? Thomas's ruling certainly left that door wide open should the regime decide everyone "needs" that exception.
And as far as job discrimination goes, well, your employer's religious beliefs now mean they can fire anyone they like.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday strengthened legal protections that shield religious institutions from job discrimination lawsuits.
It was the court's second ruling this term intended to expand religious freedom. In a previous 5-4 ruling along traditional ideological lines, the justices said states cannot exclude religiously affiliated schools from state scholarship programs, a decision that further lowered the wall of separation between church and state.
"The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission," wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the 7-2 majority. "Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent for herself and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the ruling is based on a simplistic approach that "has no basis in law and strips thousands of schoolteachers of their legal protections."
A 2012 Supreme Court ruling protects churches, the schools they run, and other religious organizations from lawsuits brought by employees who perform a "ministerial" function. Allowing such suits, the court said then, would invite government interference in a religious institution's internal affairs.
Wednesday's ruling involved Roman Catholic schools in southern California that were sued after deciding not to renew contracts for two teachers. Agnes Morrissey-Berru sued Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Hermosa Beach for age discrimination when her contract was terminated, and Kristen Biel sued St. James School in Torrance when her contract wasn't renewed after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She said the school violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In both cases, the churches said they were protected from discrimination lawsuits. But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to throw the cases out, ruling that even though the teachers taught some religious subjects, their duties were not ministerial. Morrissey-Berru is not a practicing Catholic and was not required to attend any religious training for most of the time she taught at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Got cancer? Too bad, God says you're fired. The Hobby Lobby decision is a Pandora's box that's going to destroy the Civil Rights era if left unchecked. A second Trump term guarantees it.
Oh, can't help but notice here the losers in both of these rulings are almost exclusively women...
Just putting that out there.
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