Supreme Court Takes Another Crack at Obamacare by Hearing Hobby Lobby Case

COMMENTARY | It looks like the Supreme Court is going to have another crack at Obamacare, thanks to its agreeing to hear law suits filed by Hobby Lobby and other companies over the birth control mandate in the law.

Hobby Lobby is asserting that the mandate violates religious liberty because part of the birth control mandate includes drugs like “Plan B” which it views as an abortion pill. Others maintain that corporations should not be granted freedom of religion rights and that “women’s health” trumps all other considerations. On the other hand, corporations are run by people whose religious beliefs, it is asserted, are being violated by the Obamacare act.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the Supreme Court will rule one way or the other. The sensible thing would be to agree that the government cannot violate the religious beliefs of owners of corporations under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It has already established that corporations and its owners have free speech rights under the Citizens United case.

On the other hand, it would have been sensible for the court to strike down Obamacare as unconstitutional last year. It took legal gymnastics worthy of Cirque du Soleil for the Court to rule that the individual mandate is a tax and thus constitutional. The Supreme Court is perfectly capable of doing the same thing to violate religious liberty in this case.

On the “other” other hand, the Hobby Lobby case allows the court to revisit Obamacare. Even if the court does find for Hobby Lobby and the other companies, it likely will leave the rest of the law intact, unless it decides to use more legal gyrations based, perhaps, on the severability clause.

Still, the case highlights at least one aspect in which Obamacare, rammed through Congress on a partisan vote, against the wishes of the American people, does violence to freedom as it has existed since the founding of the Republic.