Supreme Court Rules Against Obamacare Contraception Mandate

2014: The year courts in essence redefine how insurances (and society) work: Obamacare doesn’t force the owner’s of Hobby Lobby to give people the pill/IUD, but to cover their companies share of the cost of health care that includes coverage of personal medication that has nothing to do with abortion.

Arguably, the court has affirmed corporations are people, and that a corporation can hold religious beliefs, and that those religious beliefs are more important than basic women’s health care.

At the very least the court has confirmed that the religious freedom of wealthy owners is more important than the bodily freedom* of poor people who can get pregnant. This classism is another layer in this: The decision doesn’t affect the health care freedom of people who can afford birth control out of their own pocket as much as the freedom of (mostly) women who can’t afford that. People who are more dependent on their jobs with Hobby Lobby etc.

Frederick Mark Gedicks, a law professor from Bringham Young University (not exactly a bastion of radical feminism) wrote an interesting article how religious freedom is threatened with cases like this:

These cases indeed pose a grave threat to religious liberty, but not to that of the owners of these businesses. Exempting ordinary, nonreligious, profit-seeking businesses from a general law because of the religious beliefs of their owners would be extraordinary, especially when doing so would shift the costs of observing those beliefs to those of other faiths or no faith. The threat to religious liberty, then, comes from the prospect that the court might permit a for-profit business to impose the costs of its owners’ anti-contraception beliefs on employees who do not share them — by forcing employees to pay hundreds of dollars or more out of pocket each year for what should be covered under the law.

I’d argue that the case is now reality. Even if the Obama Administration jumps in to cover the cost for affected people who need contraception, I’d argue that today’s decision sets a problematic precedent. 

Anyway, these are my two cents on today’s decision. I’ve (re)tweeted a lot of interesting commentary.

*And religious freedom/freedom form their bosses religion 

Supreme Court Rules Against Obamacare Contraception Mandate