Title: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. | law case | Britannica
Headings: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
law case
Background
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Content: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. | law case | Britannica
Home Politics, Law & Government Law, Crime & Punishment
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
law case
Give Feedback
External Websites
WRITTEN BY
Brian Duignan
Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion. See Article History
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held (5–4) on June 30, 2014, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 permits for-profit corporations that are closely held (e.g., owned by a family or family trust) to refuse, on religious grounds, to pay for legally mandated coverage of certain contraceptive drugs and devices in their employees’ health insurance plans. In so ruling, the court embraced the view that closely held for-profit corporations are legal “persons” under the RFRA and are therefore capable of exercising religion. Background
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. was a consolidation of two cases, originally called Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius; the case names were changed to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Burwell, respectively, following the confirmation of Sylvia Burwell as secretary of health and human services in June 2014. The former case arose in 2012 when David and Barbara Green, their children, and the for-profit corporations they owned— Hobby Lobby, Inc. (an arts-and-crafts retailer) and Mardel Christian & Education Stores, Inc. (a chain of Christian bookstores)—filed suit in U.S. district court, naming Kathleen Sebelius, then secretary of health and human services, and others as defendants. The individual plaintiffs (the Greens) alleged that the imminent enforcement of a regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010; PPACA) would infringe their rights under the RFRA, which prohibited the government from “substantially burden [ing] a person’s exercise of religion” unless “application of the burden…is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means of furthering that…interest.” The Greens also contended that the regulation would violate the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]”).