Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND
So the rights of the 13,000 employees must be mandated by the bosses, huh?
Yes and no. Depends on which and what kind of "rights." Workplace rights (distinguished from government regulations) are mutually agreed on contractual rights. If Hobby Lobby and its employees have not contractually agreed on free contraceptives, then no such "right" exists. Constitutional rights do not include guarantees of employer provided free contraceptives, so there are no such rights. Government prescribed rights are imposed. In this case, the Federal Government has imposed neither a right, nor a law, but a regulation that certain employers must provide insurance that covers an array of contraceptives. So, in this case, no "right" per se has been granted or created, but rather a limitation and prescription on what certain employers must provide under penalty of fines. And since there is no constitutional enumeration which gives the Federal Government the power to force private business to provide any type of health insurance, nor any right, actually, to create regulatory agencies that have the plenary power, de facto or other wise, to create any regulations, and since there are not only the vast residuum of rights held in the Constitution by the people if those rights are not granted to the Federal Government, and, even beyond that, their is in the Constitution a specific right to the practice of freedom of religion that shall not be abridged by government, so because of all that their is an apparent dispute between actual constitutional rights and a prescribed government regulation, so the matter has been taken to the Supreme Court. How that will end is not certain. How it should, at least on an original constitutional basis, should not be in much dispute. But original constitutional basis has been, as Spence might say, "normalized" to be whatever five Judges prefer. So, if five Justices say the regulation is OK, case closed.
That we have gone so far toward destroying those rights we possessed which were once beyond the reach of government is troubling enough. But to continue to do so on such a trifling matter of who must pay for contraception is a reflection on how far We the People have accepted that politicians, who are not only supposed to be our servants but are no more capable nor more intelligent than We, are allowed to run our lives even in such trivial matters.
Apparently, We cannot see the danger of giving them the power to do so because we are either blinded by ideology, or somehow have become so very stupid. So stupid to believe that it ends here, or so hopeful that more "rights" will be given to us which are more substantial than the "right" to free contraceptives. The natural progression in a progressive ideology would be the right to more important free stuff--food (well, food stamps ARE multiplying), housing, clothing, transportation, recreation, and health care, for everybody, not just the poor. If that's what we're hoping for, we are not only stupid, but a hopeless, greedy, and incompetent herd of human sheep.
No one is MAKING the hobby lobby family use the contraception, just to allow their employees to obtain it under their healthcare.
But it is not THEIR health insurance. It is insurance that the government has mandated that Hobby Lobby must provide or pay a penalty. The employees only are covered under that insurance provided through Hobby Lobby. If they were to leave Hobby Lobby, they would no longer have THAT insurance. It is not THEIR'S. If they want their own insurance, one which they owned and would have no matter where or whether they worked, they would have to contract and pay for it on their own.
So it is either the business applying their morals/beliefs to 13,000 employees or the ACA doing it to the owners..
it is not a simple argument either way....
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