LEHIGH VALLEY EXPRESS-TIMES Editorial: Yet this ruling is a victory for constitutional freedom only in the narrowest sense. If you consider the court’s increasing devotion to “corporate personhood” — a precedent begun in the Citizens United ruling that allows corporations act as if they are individuals to evade campaign contribution limits — this ruling is a step backward.
Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion claims the ruling affects only “closely held” corporations (owned by a family or individual). He says the court isn’t sanctioning religious exemptions for other types of coverage, such as immunizations or blood transfusions. Alito also says there’s an easy way around it — government can require insurance companies to provide this coverage for women who request it, or pay for it itself. (Now there’s a first — the nation’s most noted opponent of ‘Obamacare’ recommending a single-payer benefit for women caught in this Catch-22).
No matter how Alito and Co. want to spin it, they’ve opened the door to other corporate appeals, which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said could create havoc. In her minority opinion, she wondered whether it could “extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus), and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others).”… (more)
