In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 289, which approved the DMV to issue speciality license plates. One of these license plates was inscripted with the message “Choose Life.” The Plaintiffs, headed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, and the Defendants, Eugene Conti and Michael Robertson, who held State positions directly pertaining to transportation, are at court regarding the “Choose Life” plate. A percentage of the annual fee to have this plate on one’s car would go to the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, which is the official contact in the state for Choose Life, Inc. The funds obtained would not be allowed to be used in any way beneficial to abortion services. Various legislators proposed amendments to the bill to included a pro-choice plate, but all six attempts failed to pass. The Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit accusing the Defendants of creating a state-funded program that backs only one viewpoint of an issue, thus violating the rights of private speech found in the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In the lower court, the presiding judge ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs in December 2011. The Defendants then appealed this decision to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, which delivered its decision December 2012.…
Lee (1982), the Supreme Court ruled that an employer cannot deprive employees of a statutory right because of religious beliefs. It was later ruled that Lee does not apply because the challenge was not a significant burden. Under RFRA, a Government action that imposes a burden on religious exercise must serve a government interest. HHS must constitute the least restrictive means of serving that interest, and the mandate for the Hobby Lobby case fails that test. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), companies with 50 or more full time employees are required to offer a health care plan that provides minimum health care coverage, including forms of contraception. It was ruled that there are other ways in which Congress, or even HHS, could equally ensure that women had cost-free access to contraceptives. The Supreme Court ruled that individuals should not have to surrender their religious independence in order to open a business. Therefore, religious family-owned corporations such as Hobby Lobby, cannot be forced to pay for employees’ contraception…
I completely agree with the opinion that the Hobby Lobby case is justified. The new interpretation that religion can also pertain to private corporations due to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. This allows for Hobby Lobby to deny birth control to employees. However, as many have stated before, the employees’ individual rights to birth control have to be respected as well. Just because the corporation itself does not believe in the birth control, this does not mean the corporation can ignore the workers’ rights to have birth control. Thus, I believe that Hobby Lobby is able to defer birth control payments to the federal government because employees that seek birth control are still able to receive it. However, in recitations,…
This mandate violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the population. Also, this violates the first amendment of the constitution that guarantees every United States citizen the freedom to practice his or her own religion. Lastly, the Affordable Care Act mandate violates the tenth amendment. The tenth amendment states that any powers not specifically named in the constitution belong to the states and the people, not the federal government. This mandate is a tremendous overreach of federal power, as the federal government has no right to enforce a mandate that violates religious freedom.…
The case came to be known as the National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius case. There were several issues raise by the anti-Obamacare side. First of all, they argued that the law mandated all citizens to pay towards the insurance scheme, even though not all citizens were supportive of the move. They also made a spirited appeal to prove the increased tax burden that the new law would impose on the highest income earners in the country. The argument was that they would be required to pay more taxes contrary to their personal wishes. The argument of increased insurance costs to employers and insurance companies also featured prominently in the court proceedings. They also cited the expansion of Medicaid in individual states, without prior consent being sought from the administrative authorities in different states. They wanted individual states to be at liberty to opt out of the expansion of Medicaid if they deemed it fit. Both sides beamed with confidence that they would win the case,…
In 2012, a family called the Greens ran Hobby Lobby, which is a craft store. This family are Christians and have strong faith in what they believe in. Being a very religious family, that they believe that giving or promoting contraceptives, will make them seem as if they are going against their own belief (Oyez, 2013). Contraceptives are artificial methods or various techniques to prevent pregnancy due to sexual intercourse, so the Greens family refuse to provide those things to their workers. This is where the Greens family is furious to give these types of protection to their workers, so they sued.…
Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course: Date: Unequal Freedom: Response In her book Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor Evelyn Nakano Glenn examines citizenship and labor as the key structures through which gender and racial inequalities were shaped, contested, and evaluated in the United States of America. The author has organized the book into seven to elucidate the complex relations between dominant groups and their subordinate counterparts in three different areas of the country: Mexicans and Anglos in the Southwest, Japanese and Haoles in Hawaii, and blacks and whites in the South. Considering the conflict between the two groups, Glenn dedicates chapters 4, 5, and 6 to explore the various efforts…
Thomas Jefferson himself helped to build a new nation based on individual freedom and self-government. The Jefferson Paradox is the Paradox of Liberty, which was to discover slaves and enslaved people through a different perspective of Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. The plantation itself played the big role in the era of slavery. Peter Jefferson, father of Jefferson, was the one who established a tobacco farm on the slopes of a mountain. Thomas Jefferson called this mountain, Monticello and made his world, free and enslaved workers built his famous house and enslaved the laborers to produce cash crops of tobacco.…
In the article titled " Hobby Lobby Ruling Much More than Abortion" discusses the supreme court ruling regarding abortion and birth control. The author expressed that family owned businesses have been ruled in court to opt out of the federal requirement to pay for birth control in health coverage for their workers. The family owned business did not feel it was fair to follow the recent mandate by President Obama regarding contraceptives. Hobby Lobby was targeted by social media for being unfair and not giving freedom a chance based on their religious beliefs. Several people backing Hobby Lobby's philosophies stated they do not force people to work there. If a person chooses to not abide by Hobby Lobby's belief's, they do not have to choose…
Under the Act the hospital is allowed to deny treatment to patients if it goes against the hospitals religious belief. The appellee may also argue that they are protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, that prohibits any agency department, or official of the United States or any State from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, 573 US__(2014), the Court held that corporations are protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court also concluded that providing contraceptives forces religious corporations to fund what they consider abortion, which goes against their stated religious principles, and creates a substantial burden that is not the least restrictive method of satisfying the government’s…
American Civil Liberties Union made the following statement regarding state religious exemption laws: “Children have rights too, and parents have certain rights which end when they intrude too far into a child's right to live...the parent's right to bring up the child in the way the parent thinks best-an important right...ends at the point at which the parents' actions endanger the lives of kids...there cannot be in our view a religious exemption no matter how sincere a parent's belief...2…
The policies of affordable health care act affect many different populations in various ways. Making the health coverage mandatory to everyone was the biggest change that everyone had to face. Many individuals were not happy because they were required to have health coverage, and some of the US population felt that their freedom of choice was violated by this act. However, the group that benefited the most was the individuals with pre-existing conditions. Prior to affordable health care act the health insurance companies usually turned down this group’s applications, or they were forced to pay extra capital for their coverage. However, with Obama care’s new policies, individuals with pre-existing conditions will have full coverage and will…
If you are at all familiar with the United States Constitution then you are also aware of the First Amendment. Many children learn in elementary school that as citizens of the United States we have the right to express ourselves freely, through the freedom of speech, press, and in many other ways, including the freedom of religion. These “freedoms” are what America is built on, and why many immigrants left their countries in which they were born and raised. They left in order to express themselves freely and to shield their children from the experience of oppression. Today many Americans take advantage of their freedom and forget how sweet it is. However, we are reminded by part of President Obama’s new health care reform bill, which demands religious groups…
One of the most important parts of the Declaration of Independence is its preamble, and, more specifically, certain phrases contained within the preamble. Thomas Jefferson does an excellent job of explaining why the colonies are doing the things they are doing, and is very clear in stating what he and his associates think are the “unalienable rights” of the American people. Among these are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Probably one of the most famous lines in American history, I have chosen to focus on this phrase and what those three things might have meant to Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers as they prepared this document, as well as what they mean to us today.…
Many citizens in the U.S. want affordable health care that will be able to help themselves and their family members. The purpose of health care is to facilitate the delivery of health care services, to protect individual and families against huge medical care expenses, and to avoid breaking national bank while they do so. In the U.S., private insurance system actually interferes with the delivery of health care and is rapidly becoming too expensive. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare, is a United States federal statute enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by the 44th President Barack Obama. Many citizens want to repeal national health care while others do not, which has become a huge problem in court.…