Chalk up yet another win for the Oligarchy.
In a 5 to 4 ruling that pitted religious freedom against equal benefits for female workers, the court’s conservatives decided that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) gave employers the right to withhold certain birth control methods from insurance coverage.
The contraceptive mandate “clearly imposes a substantial burden” on the owner’s beliefs, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority.
It was the first time that the court had decided that the federal law covers corporations, not just the “persons” referred to in its text.
via Supreme Court sides with employers over birth control mandate – The Washington Post.
My take:
I’ve watched as several of my good liberal friends were seemingly blind-sided by this ruling… when in fact it should have been expected.
The Supreme Court siding with corporate interests has a long, sordid history in this country, and today is running at full throttle. The Act of 1871, which corporatized the government (and when our organic Constitution, originally titled “The Constitution for the united states of America”, was changed to “THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” in all-caps, signaling its legal corporate status under the law) eventually led to 2010’s so-called “Citizens United” ruling, wherein corporations are fully considered to be legal “persons”. Some debate the extent to which the “rights” of corporations now supersede those of the people, and love to quote Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people and for the people” as if it were an absolute truth, but in my opinion corporations enjoy in fact more “rights” than actual people.
The “personhood” of corporations has been confirmed by the high court many times. Not long after the Act of 1871, in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania – 125 U.S. 181 (1888), the Court clearly affirmed the doctrine, holding, “Under the designation of ‘person’ there is no doubt that a private corporation is included [in the Fourteenth Amendment]. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose and permitted to do business under a particular name and have a succession of members without dissolution.” source
The Act of 1871 set the stage for the flowering of all the corporate and financial malfeasance and ethical debasement we have experienced since. Yes, it’s BS, but it’s all legal under “the law” as created by corrupted and despicable legislators for well over 100 years. It would be wise for us to disabuse ourselves of the American myth, and face the fact that we are no longer the “land of the free”… we are legal commodities, our birth certificates our writ of indenture. We have become mere tax slaves to the oligarchy, by design, with little or no legal recourse. Unless this chain of legal precedent can somehow be reversed or abolished, we can expect far worse rulings than this in the near future.
