Hobby lobby and gays

In the Hobby Lobby decision handed down last month, the Supreme Court was asked to strike a balance between women’s rights and religious freedom. But the major conflict that has erupted in. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the conservative five-justice majority found that closely held corporations do not have to comply with the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurance plans cover. An appellate court deciding Hobby Lobby violated Illinois anti-discrimination law by denying a transgender employee access to the women’s restroom could have nationwide implications, experts.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox found that Hobby Lobby ’s broad guarantee of “religious freedom” to businesses exempts religious employers from the federal ban on workplace sex.

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And the day after Hobby Lobby, a group of religious leaders petitioned Obama to include a broad exemption in the executive order he has announced to prohibit discrimination against LGBT workers by federal contractors. Hobby Lobby , on Tuesday backed off from support for a pending bill in Congress to make it illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on sexual orientation.

Some gay rights activists have been working for such a bill for decades, and finally succeeded in the Senate in November. The text of the religious exemption in the bill to which they object can be read here. In the Hobby Lobby decision , the Court ruled on June 30 that federal law gives for-profit businesses that are owned by a small group a right to refuse for religious reasons to provide birth control methods and services for their employees.

Hobby Lobby, it has become clear that the inclusion of this provision is no longer tenable. In January, it was sent to a committee in the House of Representatives, but so far has not moved forward and seems to have little chance of passage in the House. Moreover, it actually might lessen non-discrimination protections now provided for LGBT people by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of and very likely would generate confusion rather than clarity in federal law.

Posted in Everything Else , Merits Cases. Cases: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.