The Washington Post gives its (as it were corporate) view of the Hobby Lobby ruling and what it implies.
When business owners enter the public marketplace, they should expect to follow laws with which they might disagree, on religious or other grounds. This is particularly true when they form corporations, to which the government offers unique benefits unavailable to individuals.
The Supreme Court weakened that principle Monday. Congress should revitalize it.
That’s one good way of putting it. The public marketplace, like most public places, is fundamentally secular. Gods don’t need commerce or trade, because they don’t need goods and services, because they don’t need anything, because they’re gods. We need them, we humans, who live here in the secular world. That’s one reason we need secular laws and secular agreements and contracts and habits.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act muddied these waters.
If this is the sort of balancing that the Supreme Court will conduct, Congress should change the law. The Constitution generally does not require religious exceptions to generally applicable laws. The ruling relied on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that does not mention corporations and that lawmakers could easily narrow. They should not only guarantee contraception coverage but also repair the federal government’s ability to provide for wholly legitimate common goods such as public health and marketplace regulation.
Catholic bishops already interfere with a hefty percentage of US health care via all the Catholic-owned hospitals and networks of hospitals. Bishops and church doctrine should have no role in public health at all.