The Supreme Court Needs a New Hobby

A Hobby Lobby that looks different! (Photo credit: Nicholas Eckhart)

It has become an annual ritual around this time of year.  People wave the flag, have picnics, shoot off fireworks and go on vacation.  The United States Supreme Court does something similar.  The fireworks come from the controversial decisions they make, sometimes providing a feast of rulings favorable to Big Business, all in the name of interpreting the U.S. Constitution as they see fit.  And then they go away until October.

Having concluded a few years ago that corporations are people, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the justices also consider them to be a religion unto itself.  In a 5-4 decision, the Court allowed the Hobby Lobby chain of arts and craft stores (and other companies like them) to ignore parts of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), and deny their female employees coverage on contraception for religious reasons.

This leads us to the question of whether employers should impose their religious beliefs on their employees.  Never mind health insurance.  What about pharmacies who won't sell birth control products?  Would Muslim-owned businesses or other fundamentalist organizations require women employees (regardless of religion) to be covered up?  Would some employers use the Court's decision as an excuse to not hire those of certain races or sexual preferences?  Or would employees have to follow company guidelines even when they're off the job?

Would you work for such a company?  In this job market, where things are improving (but not by much), some people may find it's a choice between employment or nothing at all.  Others may find that compromising their principles is worth a steady paycheck.

The Supreme Court justices may have just opened a new can of worms here.  They're inviting  discrimination lawsuits of all types, based on who's doing the hiring and who claims to be discriminated against.  In the Hobby Lobby case, its female employees can either find another job, or stay and think twice about ever having sex again.

Boycotting Hobby Lobby isn't going to solve things, if you're not into arts and crafts.  Neither is getting a law passed in Congress to address the ruling.  (In this Congress?  Are you kidding?)

It's been 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination on the basis of race in public establishments, employment and at the voting booth.

Fifty years later, we have a Supreme Court that's more interested in upholding the rights of corporations than in the rights of the people who work for them.  Affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have already been gutted by the Court under Chief Justice John Roberts.  What other attempt to rewrite the constitution could the Court come up with in the next session?

Maybe the justices need a new hobby.