03 Jul 14
2 edits
Originally posted by no1marauderOK I've gone back and read this whole awful thread, and some of the SCOTUS decision from your link, and I disagree with you here. Alito goes well out of his way to say the court's aim is protecting the rights of people.
That's not what the SCOTUS has been saying; they are saying the corporation itself has rights.
From pg 18:
As we will show, Congress provided protection for people
like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal
fiction: It included corporations within RFRA’s definition
of “persons.” But it is important to keep in mind that the
purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human
beings. A corporation is simply a form of organization
used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An estab-
lished body of law specifies the rights and obligations of
the people (including shareholders, officers, and employ-
ees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or
another. When rights, whether constitutional or statu-
tory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect
the rights of these people. For example, extending Fourth
Amendment protection to corporations protects the privacy
interests of employees and others associated with the
company. Protecting corporations from government sei-
zure of their property without just compensation protects
all those who have a stake in the corporations’ financial
well-being. And protecting the free-exercise rights of
corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel
protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and
control those companies.
Originally posted by SleepyguyIf there were no corporations, would the Greens and Hahns have those rights?
OK I've gone back and read this whole awful thread, and some of the SCOTUS decision from your link, and I disagree with you here. Alito goes well out of his way to say the court's aim is protecting the rights of people.
From pg 18:As we will show, Congress provided protection for people
like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal
f ...[text shortened]... rdel
protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and
control those companies.
Alito is saying, as he must to get to the result he desires, that the corporation as an entity has "rights". The parties to this litigation are Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., not the Greens and Hahns.
The opinion says that not only are these corporations "persons" with "rights" but that they "exercise religion". This is patently absurd.
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by no1marauderOriginally posted by no1marauder
If there were no corporations, would the Greens and Hahns have those rights?
Alito is saying, as he must to get to the result he desires, that the corporation as an entity has "rights". The parties to this litigation are Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., not the Greens and Hahns.
The opinion says that not o ...[text shortened]... corporations "persons" with "rights" but that they "exercise religion". This is patently absurd.
If there were no corporations, would the Greens and Hahns have those rights?
You mean freedom of religion? Yes of course. What am I missing?
Alito is saying, as he must to get to the result he desires, that the corporation as an entity has "rights".
I don't know how you can read the above and reach that conclusion. He is clearly saying that for closely-held corporations, where only 5 or fewer people own the company, that the mere existence of the fictional legal entity or a profit-making motive, is not sufficient to wipe away the rights of those people.
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by SleepyguyHe's saying that in order to protect people's rights, corporations ought to be granted rights.
Originally posted by no1marauder
[b]If there were no corporations, would the Greens and Hahns have those rights?
You mean freedom of religion? Yes of course. What am I missing?
Alito is saying, as he must to get to the result he desires, that the corporation as an entity has "rights".
I don't know how you can read the above and ...[text shortened]... gal entity or a profit-making motive, is not sufficient to wipe away the rights of those people.[/b]
But that's not nearly as silly as the notion that a law should be struck down merely because some people do not like it.
Originally posted by SleepyguyYou are missing the disconnect between A and B. The Hahns and Greens don't need a corporate form to protect their religious rights (A). Therefore, the idea that not granting religious "rights" to "their" corporation is "wiping away the rights of those people (B)" is ridiculous.
Originally posted by no1marauder
[b]If there were no corporations, would the Greens and Hahns have those rights?
You mean freedom of religion? Yes of course. What am I missing?
Alito is saying, as he must to get to the result he desires, that the corporation as an entity has "rights".
I don't know how you can read the above and ...[text shortened]... gal entity or a profit-making motive, is not sufficient to wipe away the rights of those people.[/b]
EDIT: There has been 200 years of litigation regarding the free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment. And never, never has it been asserted by the SCOTUS that a for profit, commercial corporation "exercises religion":
Until this litigation, no decision of this Court recognizeda for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious ex-emption from a generally applicable law, whether underthe Free Exercise Clause or RFRA.
13
The absence of such precedent is just what one would expect, for the exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities. As Chief Justice Marshall observed nearly two centuries ago, a corporation is “an artificial being,invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.”
Trustees of Dartmouth College
v.
Woodward
, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819). Corporations, Justice Stevensmore recently reminded, “have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.”
Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Comm’n
, 558 U. S. 310, 466 (2010) (opin-ion concurring in part and dissenting in part)
Ginsburg's dissent, p. 14
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by KazetNagorra
He's saying that in order to protect people's rights, corporations ought to be granted rights.
No. I think you're flipping his intent around. Why should the rights of 5 or fewer specific citizens with sincerely held religious beliefs be wiped away just because they have incorporated their business?
But that's not nearly as silly as the notion that a law should be struck down merely because some people do not like it.
I'm not following. Are you referring to the ACA?
03 Jul 14
And to top it all off, he claims that Congress intended to extend the right to exercise religion to corporations by the plain language of RFRA but then artificially creates a distinction under that law between "closely held" corporations and "public" ones even though there is nothing, absolutely nothing in the text of that law or the Dictionary Act or anywhere else supporting such a distinction as regards a corporation's ability to "exercise religion"!!
03 Jul 14
1 edit
Originally posted by SleepyguyPlease explain, rather than merely mouthing it as a platitude, how a stockholder's religious rights are "wiped away" by making a corporation, a separate legal entity, comply with a neutral provision of law applicable to all.
Originally posted by KazetNagorra
[b]He's saying that in order to protect people's rights, corporations ought to be granted rights.
No. I think you're flipping his intent around. Why should the rights of 5 or fewer specific citizens with sincerely held religious beliefs be wiped away just because they have incorporated their business?
[b ...[text shortened]... rely because some people do not like it.[/b]
I'm not following. Are you referring to the ACA?[/b]
Why just 5 or fewer stockholders? Why not 10 million stockholders? It would be an even worse violation of all those folks' "exercising of religion" if the separate legal entity they brought stock in had to do something having, perhaps, an attenuated result which kinda violated their religious beliefs?
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by SleepyguyWhy should the government judge whether or not people's religious beliefs are sincerely held or not?
Originally posted by KazetNagorra
[b]He's saying that in order to protect people's rights, corporations ought to be granted rights.
No. I think you're flipping his intent around. Why should the rights of 5 or fewer specific citizens with sincerely held religious beliefs be wiped away just because they have incorporated their business?
[b ...[text shortened]... rely because some people do not like it.[/b]
I'm not following. Are you referring to the ACA?[/b]
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by no1marauderYou say a corporation is a "separate legal entity" as if you think that it can somehow exist without any people at all. Alito addressed that in there somewhere but I'm not going digging. But SCOTUS did NOT say, as you keep implying, that corporations have religious freedoms. They only said that in the case of a closely-held corporation an imposition of a duty is really just an imposition of a duty on the few owners. So, forcing Hobby Lobby to provide abortifacient drugs is tantamount to forcing those 5 people to do so, which is a violation of their individual religious freedom.
Please explain, rather than merely mouthing it as a platitude, how a stockholder's religious rights are "wiped away" by making a corporation, a separate legal entity, comply with a neutral provision of law applicable to all.
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by SleepyguyNo, I'm saying it is a separate legal entity because that is what it is. The Hahns and Greens wouldn't be as anxious to insist that the corporation's debts are there's because they were the ones who signed the instruments creating the debts, would they?
You say a corporation is a "separate legal entity" as if you think that it can somehow exist without any people at all. Alito addressed that in there somewhere but I'm not going digging. But SCOTUS did NOT say, as you keep implying, that corporations have religious freedoms. They only said that in the case of a closely-held corporation an imposition of a ...[text shortened]... to forcing those 5 people to do so, which is a violation of their individual religious freedom.
Besides the fact that Hobby Lobby is merely providing funds to buy insurance not abortifacient drugs (that would be up to the insured and her doctor), I fail to see the moral distinction between supposedly "forcing" 5 or less people to do something that they find somehow religiously objectionable and "forcing" a million people to do something that they find religiously objectionable. Perhaps you could explain it to me; Alito certainly didn't.
03 Jul 14
Originally posted by no1marauderDamn. You keep adding to your posts 30 seconds after I start a reply.
Why just 5 or fewer stockholders? Why not 10 million stockholders? It would be an even worse violation of all those folks' "exercising of religion" if the separate legal entity they brought stock in had to do something having, perhaps, an attenuated result which kinda violated their religious beliefs?
So to your edit. I think you can easily make the case that in a large publicly traded corporation individual shareholders are so far removed from control of the corporation that imposing a duty on the corporation effects the individuals too minimally to be an issue. But you can't make that argument when the shareholders are 5 or fewer specific people with sincerely held religious beliefs.