I can’t honestly say that I’m happy with everything Barack Obama has done as President. I’m not angry, because both times that I voted for him, I knew I was voting for a centrist, even though I would rather have voted for a progressive, but I also knew that the only electable alternatives would have brought with them the end of representative government. Even though they hold only one branch of the federal government, they are still using every lie, trick and theft they can muster in attempts to insert themselves into every position of power and between every woman’s legs. At least with respect to the latter, he is fighting back.
For most of the last year, the Supreme Court has forced the Obama Administration into an elaborate dance, where the Court hands down orders casting doubt upon the administration’s efforts to ensure that all women have access to affordable birth control — while simultaneously implying that everything would be fine if the administration just designed their birth control policy a different way. Friday, the administration is expected to announce a new policy that appears designed to end this dance and force the justices to rule definitively [Faux Print delinked] on whether employers with religious objections to birth control effectively have the power to restrict their employees’ access to birth control coverage, no matter how the government structures its regulations.
Up until now, the administration’s rules treated non-profit and for-profit employers as separate entities. Religious non-profits who object to birth control could exempt themselves from the requirement to offer contraceptive care to their employees by filling out a specific form that informs the government of their objection, and sending a copy of the form to their insurance provider or administrator. In most cases, once the non-profit employer submitted this form, their insurer would then contract separately with their workers to ensure that those workers had contraceptive coverage. These non-profit rules spawned one round of litigation brought by religious non-profit organizations which claim that even being required to fill out a short form violates their religious liberty.
Meanwhile, for-profit employees were required to comply with their legal obligations to their employees. Prior to the Supreme Court’s June decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which significantly reworked the balance of power between employers and employees, the law was clear that for-profit businesses could not invoke their owners’ religious beliefs to exempt themselves from their legal obligations to their workers. “When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice,” the Court held in its 1982 decision in United States v. Lee, “the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Hobby Lobby, of course, was the culmination of a second round of litigation brought by for-profit employers whose owners have religious objections to birth control. And it effectively eliminated the protections Lee extended to workers, at least with respect to federal law….
…In any event, however, the Obama Administration’s new rules will likely put an end to the Supreme Court’s ability to move the goalposts every time someone raises a new objection to the administration’s policy. The administration has now crafted its rules to comply almost to the letter with the requirements suggested by previous Supreme Court opinions. Now, the rest of the country will have to wait to find out whether Hobby Lobby actually permits this latest set of rules — or whether the language in that decision leading the Obama Administration in this direction will simply end with Lucy pulling away the football one more time…
Inserted from <Think Progress>
Click through for how the five Injustices SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) have resorted to trickery to violate the Constitution while blaming their First Amendment violations on regulations. It is my hope that Roberts will flip in an attempt to preserve the legacy of the Court,not that Obama is denying him regulations as an excuse. Make sure to prevent any more Republican appointments to the court until children ask, “What’s a Republican?”, and nobody remembers.
16 Responses to “Obama Fights Back on Birth Control”
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I think we a centrist. It does sometimes make one want go gurrr sometimes. But at the end of the day to far right or left can be a danger. Take Rand Paul who has make no secret about running for president in 2016. He being libertarian can be more if not more of a danger. Not only would it be going backward in race issues including women's rights. I think were he could make in roads is were we America stand on war. issues. But then again will he matter I think not.
Just like Idiot (his dad) in that respect.
Unfortunately there will always be Republicans. If we ever succeed in hanging the baggage on the word that rightfully goes with it, they will just come up with another word. (They have done a far better job of demonizing us. Read the Canterbuty Tales: The Franklin's Tale if you want to know what "liberal" is SUPPOSED to mean.)
Preventing them from reproducing would be a good step, but would not solve the problem, since there are such things as recessive genes.
It was a nice drfeam.
I voted for Obama twice. I don't think, if Obama had lost, it would be the end of representative government, but it would be a f…ing mess, not to mention a war with Iran if McCain won.
One of my complaints about Obama is not investigating the wrongdoings of the Bush administration. Ford's pardon of Nixon stopped justice in its tracks. Obama not investigating the Bush administration did the same. Many countries around the world have declared Bush and some of his henchmen war criminals, but not America.
Steve, here's where I think you're wrong. Assumre if you will that Obama had lost and a Republican appointments had been seated on SCOTUS instead of Kagan ans Sotomayor. With Justices Santorum and Bachmann on the court, Republicans could and would legislate away the voting rights of minorities, women, students, gays, labor, students, veterans, etc,
Birth control is really a misnomer. It should be called pregnancy control.
I'd rather call it Republican control…. like pest cointrol in advance.
The birth control subject has been beaten to death. If the real subject were discussed, we might get somewhere!
The religious right has had to many irons in the fire on this subject. The Hobby Lobby case is such alie! All they wanted was to make sure that they could do whatever they wanted in the insurance industry! And to say that the IUD is a way to have an abortion is just ludicrous! The IUD has been in use for decades and they didn’t have a problem with it until the recent healthcare law came out!
They are so used to it, their portfolios are full of the stocks from the companies that make the products!
Shame on Hobby Lobby for dealing from the wrong side of the deck!!
Were it not for them, Republicans would havew found another compan run by pseudo-Christians.
The quintumvirate Justices compromising the Court's Catholic Caliphate have done more damage to America in general – and women in particular – than any other entity.
Amen Father Nameless.
I doubt the Supreme Court realized the ramifications of their Hobby Lobby decision. They have opened the door to frivolous suits by companies that don't want to pay anything, they can now claim religious beliefs. It can also be used to discriminate, as the article says, the LGBT community will suffer because of it. There will always be Republicans, TC, because they seem to do much better at PR than the rest of us and can convince otherwise sensible people that wrong is right.
The SCOTUS should have known that when you play with fire you get burned! They really opened a can of worms with the Hobby Lobby decision and are now starting to pay the price.
Lynn, and Edie, I think they knew what they were doing. Had they eliminated birth control for all womern all at once, the protests we see over Hobby Lobby now would be nothing. The way they are doing it, they can take away birth control incrementally, by decicing in favor of one frivolous lawsuit at a time.
TC, you are probably right.