by Bruce Frohnen
Crisis Magazine
It seems only yesterday that the Supreme Court, in the Hobby Lobby case, held that the federal government cannot force Christian owners of closely held corporations to pay for employee health insurance coverage for abortion inducing drugs. After that case, some commentators predicted greater government respect for the rights of religious believers to refuse their support to contraceptive and abortion “services.” This always was a false hope because the Hobby Lobby decision was based, not on the Constitution, but on a particular statute (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or RFRA) and the protections it provides individuals (not churches or even corporations) to “express” their religious “opinions.” That is, the Court only purported to defend the rights of some religious believers to express their religious beliefs through their control of policies that clearly could be traced back to themselves, for example in closely held corporations. There was no pretense of respecting the rights of corporate groups (churches in particular) to govern themselves according to the tenets of their religions. Nor was there any finding of a Constitutional right to religious “expression” in this area that might protect people and communities from other laws less friendly than RFRA.
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Bruce Frohnen is Professor of Law at the Ohio Northern University College of Law. He is also a senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center and author of many books including The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism, and the editor of Rethinking Rights (with Ken Grasso), and The American Republic: Primary Source.
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