id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
inlawrev-18597	Melone, Matthew A.	Corporations and Religious Freedom: Hobby Lobby Stores--A Missed Opportunity to Reconcile a Flawed Law with a Flawed Health Care System	2014	48	.pdf	application/pdf	25067	1365	55	In 2015] CORPORATIONS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 471 subject to RFRA except for statutes that were adopted after November 16, 1993, and explicitly excluded themselves from its strictures by reference to RFRA.57 Under the statute, the exercise of religion is defined as any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.58 II. BURWELL V. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC. A. Factual Background Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. is a fifty year old for-profit corporation organized under the laws of Pennsylvania that employs 950 people.59 The corporation’s voting stock is held entirely by the founder, his wife, and three sons, all of whom are devout Mennonites.60 The Mennonite Church opposes abortion, and the shareholders operate the corporation in accordance with their religious principles.61 The corporation objected to two of the drugs for which coverage was mandated under the administrative guidelines implementing the requirements of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act because it believed that such drugs were abortifacients.62 Consequently, the provision of insurance coverage for the purchase of such drugs violates its religious beliefs.63 The Third Circuit, affirming the district court’s denial of injunctive relief, rejected the corporation’s claims that the contraception mandate violated RFRA and the First Amendment because, in the court’s opinion, a for-profit secular corporation cannot engage in religious exercise and is therefore protected neither under RFRA nor the First Amendment.64 The court also rejected similar claims brought by the that case, the Court held that RFRA as applied to the states exceeded Congress’ authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. The language of the statute, as originally enacted, referred to freedom of religious exercise under the First Amendment and not to freedom of religious exercise under existing Court precedent.100 In any event, later amendments to the statute resolved any ambiguity that may have existed in this respect.101 Justice Ginsburg’s dissent disagreed with this interpretation of congressional intent.102 Referencing the express language of the statute, case law, and legislative history, she believed that RFRA was enacted to restore, by statute, the religious protections that the Court curtailed in Smith but nothing more.103 According to Justice Alito, a concession that RFRA incorporated pre-Smith law into the statute is not a concession of the point at issue because pre-Smith law implicitly recognized the standing of for-profit corporations to assert a free exercise claim.104 Referring to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and an anti-discrimination statute relating to abortion, the Court stated that Congress has shown that it is capable of specificity when it wants to exclude for-profit corporations from the benefits of religious accommodation.105 Finally, Justice Alito dismissed the notion that the practical difficulties of applying RFRA to for-profit corporations are evidence of the congressional intent to exclude them from the application of the statute.106 There is little or no 97.	cache/inlawrev-18597.pdf	txt/inlawrev-18597.txt