I had fun guessing what behemoth building was being erected next to Petco in Auburn. Few knew what was going up.
David and Barbara Green are the owners of Hobby Lobby, a family run, privately-owned, highly profitable business ($3.3 billion in 2013) boasting 572 stores across the U.S. Their success does not stop there; in fact, they won a Supreme Court case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in June of this year with a 5-4 vote. That means that Hobby Lobby does not lose its religious liberty to deny employees insurance coverage for contraceptives under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Potential employees need to know that Hobby Lobby won a right to deny contraceptive coverage to women. When businesses buy an insurance package, they are not looking to see what they can take out of the insurance package as it doesn’t lower the cost of the contract — it costs the same. Now, the Greens get to decide what they want in the employee insurance contract.
In Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, she questioned whether religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives 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)?
I question the Greens’ need to influence their employees private lives through insurance coverage. What kind of hobby is that?
Joan Wenzel, Auburn
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