Atty: Hobby Lobby won't offer morning-after pill
Customers walk to a Hobby Lobby store in Dallas in this Nov. 1, 2012 file photo. The arts and craft supply company owned by a Christian family asked a judge to block a portion of the new federal health care law, claiming that mandated coverage for certain birth control violates its religious freedom rights. / AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
WASHINGTON An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day.
Hobby Lobby and religious book-seller Mardel Inc., which are owned by the same conservative Christian family, are suing to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills.
The companies claim the mandate violates the religious beliefs of their owners. They say the morning-after pill is tantamount to abortion because it can prevent a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in a woman's womb.
On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the companies' request for an injunction while their lawsuit is pending, saying the stores failed to satisfy the demanding legal standard for blocking the requirement on an emergency basis. She said the companies may still challenge the regulations in the lower courts.
Kyle Duncan, who is representing Hobby Lobby on behalf of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a statement posted on the group's website Thursday that Hobby Lobby doesn't intend to offer its employees insurance that would cover the drug while its lawsuit is pending.
"The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees," Duncan said. "To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs."
In ruling against the companies last month, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton said churches and other religious organizations have been granted constitutional protection from the birth-control provisions but that "Hobby Lobby and Mardel are not religious organizations."
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Organization from the faith of their private members
Even if such members are business owner or employers
I find this mandate from the Law to be Lawless
What is good for the religious organizations
Should also be good for the members of such organization
After all, no organization would ever exist without
their members.
Is this Idea reasonabme and truth or not?
In my opinion they picked a very hard, but a good battle to fight. People said that slavery would never end in the South, but it did thanks to Lincoln and many brave men and women. People said that America would never win the the Revolution, but we did.
Be careful what you say.
If you are a business, you have the choice of either complying with the law or paying the fine, a fine that would most certainly cause you to shortly close up shop. Refuse to pay the fine, and you will be closed and/or jailed for breaking the law.
If Hobby Lobby chooses to close up or go bankrupt because of this rather silly issue, then that is fine too, because the next day another business will simply take their place in their spot, selling the same merchandise at similar prices. Nothing special about Hobby Lobby, they can easily be replaced with some other hobby type retailer. Capitalism and the free market at work.
The lesson here for Hobby Lobby is, pick your battles carefully. This is not a winnable one.
And Slow if the founding fathers had meant "Freedom from religious oppression" that is what they would have said. They said exactly what they meant!
PAPA JOHNS PIZZA
OLIVE GARDEN
WAL MART
ALL ANTI AMERICAN EMPLOYEE COMPANY'S.
Sounds good to me, fine 'em until they bleed.
If they close, someone else will open to take their niche, no potential profit is ever left unexploited.
The argument "I don't wanna pay tax for..." is totally irrelevant, it is one of the bills you pay to live. If you can't pay rent, then leave.
Speaking of bills to pay, how many of you right wingers will allow someone who pays you for whatever it is you sell, to tell you what to do with money after they have paid it to you?
After you suckers pay your taxes, the money is no longer yours to be concerned about, other than through the electoral process.
As for religion, that is also irrelevant in this matter.
Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion, the framers adopted the specific language regarding freedom of religion so that government cannot enact laws based on any idiot's interpretation of religion, but it can protect the populace from being forced to follow some idiot's twisted interpretation of religion.
The bottom line is HL has posited and announced that it will break a law. Period. Their reasons why are irrelevant.
They should be forced to pay from the first day they decide to break the law, and of a truth, the people who make the decision to break the law should be held personally responsible.
Some jail time would go a long way towards putting the fear of the law into the crooked and corrupt CEOs of corporations.
That fear of the law is sorely needed nowadays.
We voted for the people who made the laws, the presidents who signed the bills into law, and the people who appointed the SCOTUS members to reject or uphold the laws.
But now you whine and squeal when it appears that the laws, made by those for whom we voted, conflict with your wish to disregard, without consequence, those laws with which you don't agree.
There are people in jails whose only crime was to smoke a joint, not agreeing with the prohibition thereof, you baggers have no problem with the letter of the law on that matter, especially when those convicted have permanent tans.
But for those "palefaces" who have the big bux, you gladly play the sucker, hoping, like the lap dogs you are, that they will allow a few scraps to fall off their table for you to lap up.
It is a good thing you are outnumbered now, so our struggle to keep your ilk from taking society back to the dark ages of involuntary servitude grows less of an uphill battle, and levels off, hopefully to begin the end game of marginalizing the right wing agenda until the baggers no longer have any influence in socio-political matters.
People like you are totalitarian scum!
When I read what you slime put out, I see how Germany went so wrong in the 30's. You people are always the same!"
And people like yourself and other Liberloons are anarchist scumbags. You can protest all you want, but the bottomline is that Liberloons are just anarchists when all is said and done and not even good enough to kiss the foot of a Democrat.