Evangelical Corporations Try To Force Their Employees To Follow Their Religious Beliefs

In 2010 at the behest of the Koch brothers, Mitch McConnell, and corporate leaders everywhere, the U.S. Supreme Court granted personhood rights to corporations giving them power to control the direction of the government and buy the services of Republicans candidates without campaign finance restrictions. Dissatisfied with the inordinate power the conservative court gave corporations, they are likely headed back to the Supreme Court to demand power to impose their religion on their employees in the next logical step towards transforming America into a theocracy. Despite the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of, and from, religious imposition on the people, the extremist Christian fanatics intent on forcing all Americans to toe the evangelical line and fall under the purview of America’s version of Sharia Law are appealing to the conservative High Court for their blessing to impose their bastardized version of Christianity on the people and as usual they are focusing their attention on women.

The latest tactic of corporations with evangelical CEOs is a continuation of last year’s attempt to ban American women from using birth control as a result of President Obama’s inclusion of contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act. At issue is whether a secular corporation with no business relationship or involvement in a religion can be considered religious and force its employees to follow the corporation’s religious beliefs and be prohibited from using contraceptives included in prescription coverage in health plans. The President gave religious organizations and churches permission to ban their employees from having access to contraceptives, but it still did not satisfy the neo-Christian fascist wing who sees the conservative Court as their ticket to impose, by Constitutional fiat, their religious convictions on their employees. It is noteworthy that the push to ban contraceptive use is being pressed by evangelical men who avoid using IUDs or hormonal birth control pills by choice, but their personal choice is not the issue; eliminating women’s choice is.

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Writing for the 3rd Circuit’s majority, Judge Robert Cowen said although there was “a long history of protecting corporations’ rights to free speech,” there was no history of protecting a company’s free exercise of religion. “We simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation can exercise religion. A holding to the contrary … would eviscerate the fundamental principle that a corporation is a legally distinct entity from its owners.” A few weeks ago, the Colorado-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores finding that corporations are entitled to assert religious rights and impose them on their employees. The court specifically noted that President Obama had offended the company’s religious beliefs with the contraception requirement. Now that there is a split between the 3rd and 10th Circuit decisions, it falls to the Supreme Court to rule if a corporation has the Constitutional right to impose its “religious convictions” on its employees.

Evangelical Corporations Try To Force Their Employees To Follow Their Religious Beliefs