The Republican agenda has been taken over by the Supreme Court. This bizarre circumstance has come about as a result of the fact that this present Republican Congress has done less than any other in history. Each time the Supreme Court issues a judgement it is welcomed by the Republican establishment. As expected, (Blog: The Supreme Court, The Constitution and Sanity), the Supreme Court ruled, in the Hobby Lobby case, that a corporation, whom they had already ruled was an “individual”, could as a result of their religious belief, be exempted from obeying a law of Congress, which, in this instance, just happened to be a part of Obamacare. (More about this decision later).This was greeted by John Boehner, Republican leader of Congress and Tom Cruz , one of the Republican leading lights in the Senate, with wild affirmation that Obamacare was unconstitutional. Republican Senator Mike Lee chipped in to the effect that, what were women complaining about as they use contraception for “recreational purposes”.
Boehner’s only contribution to legislation has been to try and rescind Obamacare so it was understandable that that he was so elated. This decision has hobbled the Affordable Health Care Act.
Contemporaneously with the Republican Congress doing nothing and the Supreme Court doing everything, Obama has been issuing Executive orders where he is able to address the urgent needs of healthcare, minimum wage, equality in pay for women, protecting LBGT’s from work discrimination, climate change, infrastructure improvement, job creation, immigration reform and the like. This has angered the Republicans who, presumably, are very happy for all policy to emanate from the Supreme Court. They have threatened to sue Obama for unconstitutional behavior for his efforts. If litigation materializes as to whether Obama is behaving constitutionally or not it will be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. The latter have already registered irritation at his use of executive orders. (Blog: The Climate Changes for Climate Change).
America is now faced with the situation that the Executive and Judicial branches of government are legislating and the legislature, whose job it is to legislate, is merely cheering and jeering them on.
ROBERTS COURT’S PHILOSOPHY
The Robert’s Supreme Court in addition to enshrining the rights of corporations, has ruled again and again in favor corporations against ordinary individuals. It has equated money with freedom of speech and in fact stated that the more money you have the more freedom of speech you were entitled to. In addition they have allowed individuals as well as their corporations to give as much money as they liked to political causes, decreased the influence and power of trade unions, stripped the provisions of affirmative action, denuded the power of the protection of voter rights thereby allowing States to undo what they were mandated under civil rights legislation, restricted abortion rights and on and and on.
The Supreme Court have now consecrated into law that some individuals, (corporation individuals), have more rights than others.
As a result of giving the corporation a persona, a few “giver individuals”, using their corporations as a cloak, can override the rights of millions of the “taker individuals”. Thus the alleged religious beliefs of the few corporation individuals count and not the beliefs of tens of millions of others that are their employees. To quote Dana Millbank this cornerstone of their rulings and philosophy is a fiction. As was observed by Justice Marshall nearly two centuries ago, “A corporation is an artificial being, invisible and intangible,and existing only as a contemplation of the law.
Now the majority of this court claim to be strictly constructionist, that is they are true to the literal interpretation of the Constitution, (1787), out of which flowed the 1789 Declaration of Independence. Jay H. Ell believes that this is the most activist court he has encountered in history . How else could you interpret their judgements in the light of the preamble paragraph to the 1789 Declaration?
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with inalienable Rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
REPUBLICAN BOEHNER’S AGENDA COINCIDES WITH SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
Now if Boehner had effected all the Supreme Court had legislated on he would be very happy. The Court's agenda is so so the Republican agenda. Corporations are people, the rich “givers” are being championed over the poor “takers”. Voter suppression laws are being given the go ahead. The latter is a key plank in the Republican strategy to win back the Senate and keep the turnout low.
Most importantly Obamacare has now taken a massive knock at the hands of the Court. Notwithstanding the alleged narrowness of the decision it is believed that at least 50% of women work for companies that are “closely held”. There are, according to The Daily Beast, 80 companies, lined up to take advantage of the Hobby Lobby decision. Also this feeds into the anti female agenda the Republicans are associated with, whatever their reasons are for perpetuating it. Several of their leading lights are openly against all contraception period and those that know better just shut up. So happiness has been registered by the Republicans at the decision because they believe it is priority to knock Obama and his Care as this meets their base’s needs. They elect to do this again once again at the expense of women. One wonders if there are any women in their base and if there are why do they take all this demeaning behavior?
THAT BIZZARE HOBBY LOBBY DECISION.
While Jay H. Ell is no legal scholar the Hobby Lobby decision giving the individuals, that hide under the cloak of their corporation, more rights than anyone else, seems to be more a reflection of the majority of the Court’s beliefs than it is of any legal sense. The argument that this is a “narrow decision” was refuted by the majority themselves. They have interpreted their judgment to apply to all the scores of cases that are languishing in the lower courts with regard to the denial of contraceptive rights for women under Obamacare. Some of those litigations are far broader than the Hobby Lobby case. The latter only applied to those contraceptive methods that the corporation individuals believed were abortifacients.
The judgement, written by Justice Alito, who is right of Ghengis Khan, is a tautologous collection of distortions of legal precedents and misrepresentation of the intent of legislators in the Religious Restoration Act.
Medical opinion disagreed with Hobby Lobby’s beliefs.
This brings Jay H. Ell to one of his arguments that this decision did not make legal sense. The American Medical Association and The College of American Obstetricians and Gynecologists, to name two of the authors of briefs, maintained that the contraception methods quoted by the Plaintiffs were not abortifacients. Also the health effects of contraceptive medications on women’s health were touted at length. Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, argued that that was irrelevant! What mattered was not whether the contraceptives were abortifacients or not, what was relevant was what these corporate individuals believed that they were. So it is inconsequential that the corporate individuals are talking rubbish when depriving millions of American women of their rights as long as they believe that they are not wrong.
While belief often plays a role in legal decisions the Courts often define what the basis or circumstances of accepting these beliefs must be. This is lacking in this instance. The Court just believed that the plaintiffs believed this drivel. They set no parameters as to what criteria to use as belief for subsequent cases. Where there is a subjective basis to a right or opinion it is expected that the standard should be very high before accepting it. For example, businessman Michael Potter’s “religious” objection is,coupled with his statement, “I don’t care if the Federal Government is telling me to buy Jack Daniels or birth control. What gives them the right to do that?” The litigation thus will become a bottomless pit as Justice Ginsberg, in her dissent, correctly prophesied, that it would become.
As a matter of a fact there is some doubt as to what Hobby Lobby, who claim to be guided in business by their faith, does really believe. According to CNN Money, the firm has millions of dollars invested in their 401(k) pension plans in contraception for women. The drugs and devices that they named in their litigation are manufactured by companies that they invest in
Court extrapolated it’s judgement to all cases involving refusal to pay for women’s contraception.
The Court then, in a series of orders issued within forty - eight hours of their judgement, maintained that their law now applied to the court cases in the Federal Appeal Courts and thus the lower courts where objections were in some instances to providing any contraception. The court did not indicate that they had reviewed these litigations and what was the basis of religious beliefs of the privileged corporate individuals. So how can the Hobby Lobby decision be a precedent for them? At the very least the majority court opinion should have given the lower court guidelines as to what constituted religious belief other than plaintiffs say so. There are over a 100 cases pending and as Justice Ginsberg warned in her dissenting opinion just two days prior to the orders issued by the Court, this ruling was of startling breadth.
Court maintained that religious beliefs not related to contraception were irrelevant.
The next problem with the Court’s opinion was that it was only religious beliefs relating to contraception that the court would accept. Religious beliefs relating to other treatments would not be accepted as grounds for not providing them. The Seven Day Adventists firmly held belief that no blood products be administered was specifically excluded as being valid for payment exclusion on the basis of religious belief. Also the Church of Scientology corporate individuals were specifically instructed that their religious beliefs on vaccinations just would not cut it. If a group of corporate individuals sincerely believed that Aids is G-D’s punishment for deviant behavior they still have to cough up and pay for the antivirals. Or if Muslim or Jewish corporate individuals don’t want to pay for pig valves for valvular disease they still will be responsible.
This is religious discrimination of the highest order. If the basis of the Court’s decision was The Religious Freedom Restoration Act this cannot apply to only one religion’s belief system. The religious belief system that contraception, in general, is taboo, is a doctrine of the fundamentalist churches and Catholicism and are not followed by over 90% of Catholic women in America.
POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
Both sides claimed advantage. How this can help the Republicans is difficult to understand even though it is ostensibly a knock to Obamacare. At the end of the day it is so easy to categorize it as an attack on women by five old white men. If Jay H. Ell was a Republican he would maintain that this is a Supreme Court Decision and as such it must be respected. The Republicans by identifying with it, lead by cheerleader Rush Limbaugh, have to defend it to the women of America. Hillary Clinton has chimed in that this may lead to a single payer medical system and all the Republican candidates for Presidency supported it except Chis Christie, who has enough troubles of his own.
The judgment came at the same time that Obama took on Boehner’s threat to sue him and he issued more executive orders on immigration. This decision adds fuel to the fire that Obama is a President acting contrary to the Constitution. As far as Obama is concerned - “Sue Me!”. He has openly lost patience. According to Dan Balz of the Washington Post his disrespect for the Republican tactics has hardened to contempt.
The Republicans and the Supreme Court for that matter have no sense of history. They cannot behold how they will be viewed in history. There is no hope for the directionless Republicans who are mired in their own internecine struggle and united only against the Democrats. At one stage Jay H. Ell believed Chief Justice Roberts had a sense of history, (Blog: The Robert’s Supreme Court and Obamacare Part 2), but he too has merely became the orchestrator of making America an uneven playing field.
WHY?
Why on earth would the Supreme Court act in such a seemingly capricious manner? Basically, they are have put into law that a few individuals, that form a corporation, on the basis of their beliefs, right or wrong, can outweigh the rights of millions of people on the issue of contraception.They have given corporation individuals this advantage in several other instances but why this bias on contraception? Now we know they are all elderly massively conservative white men appointed by Republican administrations. But there has to be more than all this for this, at kindest, it is the most quaint legal judgment since Bush v Gore.
It just so happens that the beliefs of all five just might coincide with those stated by the Hobby Lobby corporate individuals. All five Judges are fundamentalist purist Catholics whose doctrine on contraception happens to coincide with their own. It is very difficult to explain their ruling on any other basis than that they were following Catholic doctrine. If this is so, one wishes they would follow through on the Pope’s exhortation to support disadvantaged individuals. If they did the latter it would also be in sync with the philosophy and intent of the American Constitution that is their responsibility to interpret.
Just on final point the Courts of Justices Warren and Burger that were said to be “activist”, merely interpreted law in the context that “All men are created equal”. The context of the Roberts Court’s legislation is that some men are created more equal than others.
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