Thank Scalia For Your Birth Control Coverage (Seriously)

[kpete]

The author of this religion-destroying opinion? Noted Catholic Antonin Scalia.


...............In 1990, the Supreme Court decided a case called Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). Two men, members of the Native American Church, used peyote in their rituals. They were employed in Oregon as counselors at a private rehab clinic. Oregon outlawed peyote, with no exception for religious use. The men were subsequently fired once their drug use was discovered, and applied for unemployment benefits. The state of Oregon denied them benefits because - guess what? - they were fired for committing a crime under state law, and had committed work-related misconduct.

The case found its way to the Supreme Court, where the court set down a new rule. The standard for determining if a regulation burdened the free exercise of a religious adherent or organization was whether the law was neutral toward religion and generally applicable, lacking any pretext designed to obscure a hostility toward religious practice. The court even stated that to permit otherwise under the First Amendment "would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."

The author of this religion-destroying opinion? Noted Catholic Antonin Scalia.

.............................

Whatever the political fallout, the Obama Administration is on the right side of this, legally. And they've got lovable ol' Antonin to thank for it.

MORE:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/thank-scalia-for-your-birth-control-seriously

[Segami]

1. K&R: Rethuglican heads must be spinning like tops today...LOL!

[elleng]

2. Smith case discussed in this Greenhouse piece:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101612877

She wrote:

'What they now claim (in Catholic/new rule situation) is a right to special treatment: to conscience that trumps law.

But in fact, that is not a principle that our legal system embraces. Just ask Alfred Smith and Galen Black, two members of the Native American Church who were fired from their state jobs in Oregon for using the illegal hallucinogen peyote in a religious ceremony and who were then deemed ineligible for unemployment compensation because they had lost their jobs for “misconduct.” They argued that their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion trumped the state’s unemployment law.

In a 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court disagreed. Even a sincere religious motivation, in the absence of some special circumstance like proof of government animus, does not merit exemption from a “valid and neutral law of general applicability,” the court held. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion, which was joined by, among others, the notoriously left wing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

A broad coalition of conservative and progressive religious groups pushed back hard, leading to congressional passage of the tendentiously titled Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It provided that a free exercise claim would prevail unless the government could show a “compelling” reason for holding a religious group to the same legal requirements that applied to everyone else. After a Catholic church in Texas invoked that law in an effort to expand into a landmark zone where no new building was permitted, the Supreme Court declared the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional as applied to the states. The law remains in effect as applied to the federal government, although its full dimension remains untested.

Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday asserting that the contraception regulation violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and it’s not unlikely that one or more lawsuits may soon test that proposition. The question would then be whether the case for the mandate, without the broad exemption the church is demanding, is sufficiently “compelling.” Such a case would pit the well-rehearsed public health arguments (half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and nearly half of those end in abortion – a case for expanded access to birth control if there ever was one ) against religious doctrine.'

[zbdent]

3. UNfortunately, the link also points out

that this ruling applies to STATES ... and that in 1993, it was ruled that it didn't apply NATIONALLY ... (confirmed in 2006, natch ...)

Simple solution ... the Catholic entities can refuse government funds. Period. Let them sell some of that Nazi gold they have in the Vatican basement to fund their "charities" ... I'm sure it would bring a tear to Pope Naziberger's eye to lose his beloved Adolf's treasures ...