Title: Hobby Lobby 101: explaining the Supreme Court's birth control ruling - CSMonitor.com
Headings: Hobby Lobby 101: explaining the Supreme Court's birth control ruling
Hobby Lobby 101: explaining the Supreme Court's birth control ruling
July 10, 2014
What was the basis of the owners’ religious objections?
What Supreme Court’s jettisoning of precedent may mean for future
Do they oppose all birth control?
Some religious owners of corporations oppose all birth control. Are those employers now entitled to eliminate birth control in every form from their company health care plans?
What was the basis for the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision?
Did the First Amendment ’s guarantee of free exercise of religion apply in the Hobby Lobby case?
Why didn’t the First Amendment apply in the Hobby Lobby case?
How does the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protect religious liberty?
What would be the least restrictive means of providing cost-free contraceptives to female workers at Hobby Lobby?
Don’t women have a constitutional right to access to birth control and abortion?
Doesn’t a company owner’s insistence on a religious accommodation result in the imposition of his or her religious beliefs on employees?
What kind of accommodation will the government authorize in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision?
Politics with respect

Content: Instead of applying First Amendment protections in the Hobby Lobby case, the court sought to enforce the terms of RFRA. How does the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protect religious liberty? Under RFRA, if a law substantially burdens someone’s religious practice, the government must prove that the burden is necessary to advance a compelling government interest. The government must also prove that its pursuit of that compelling interest is being undertaken by using the “least restrictive means.” In its Hobby Lobby ruling, the high court found that the government had failed to demonstrate that the ACA’s contraception mandate was the least restrictive means (meaning least burdensome to religious practice) of achieving its goal of providing cost-free access to female employees to the full range of contraceptive methods. What would be the least restrictive means of providing cost-free contraceptives to female workers at Hobby Lobby? The Supreme Court said the most straightforward way would be for the government itself to pay the contraception costs of female employees at companies or organizations asserting religious objections. The court also said it would be less restrictive of religious freedom for the government to offer objecting companies the same accommodation it offers to nonprofit religious groups. Under that plan, the contraception coverage is paid for by the insurance provider, not the employer. Don’t women have a constitutional right to access to birth control and abortion?