World News Korner

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision retreats somewhat from the Hobby Lobby case on Monday. The only three female Justices issue blistering dissent.

Courtesy of Politico:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Wheaton College doesn’t have to abide by the Obamacare contraceptive coverage requirement as long as the Christian school tells the Obama administration that it has a religious objection to providing birth control to its employees and students.

The order from a 6-3 court, and a scathing dissent, may foreshadow the second round of legal battles expected to take place in the Supreme Court later this year. On Monday, the court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that closely held companies could be exempted from the contraception mandate if their owners had religious objections.

This did not go over too well with three of the Supreme Court Justices. Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagen, who issued a frustrated response.

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today,” Sotomayor wrote. “After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position.”

Sotomayor also stressed the rarity of a Supreme Court emergency injunction, arguing that Wheaton’s potential for fines didn’t warrant the high court’s intervention. And she questioned whether the self-certification form that the Illinois college would fill out as part of that accommodation is a legitimate burden.

“Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs,” she wrote. “But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.”

Well it looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dead right in her dissent to the Hobby Lobby ruling.

Not that any of us should be surprised.

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