Cases are coming down the line analyzing whether businesses purchasing insurance plans and providing them to employees as compensation can, based on religious objections, get out of the Obamacare mandate that the plans include birth control. (See, e.g.).
Sometimes, the business in question is a corporation, and a question that has to be addressed is whether a corporation can be said to have bona fide religious beliefs. And, of course they cannot. The corporate form is a government construct designed to shield individuals from personal responsibility for their actions in order to encourage economic activity. [Insert standard rant about how libertarians can be anti-government and pro-personal responsibility and tolerate the existence of the corporate form.] Because the corporation, as an entity, is entirely a government created legal fiction; it does not legally have any qualities not provided for under the law — moral belief is not such a quality.
Then, the question becomes, when do the moral beliefs of individual owners become relevant to the legal rights of the corporation? That’s a closer question; but I’d suggest that if the corporate form shields an individual owner from a creditor of the corporation; that shield also forms a barrier to the owner’s moral concerns. If it’s a shield, it’s a barrier — you can’t let the Holy Ghost through one direction without individual liability coming through the other way.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I heard the DC court made that ruling. Well see what SCOTUS has to say about it.
Well said.
So we draw the line where? Between corporations and LLCs? Between corporations/LLCs and sole proprietorships? Then what about partnerships? Yours is an interesting approach. I’m not sure it works though as a distinction between treatment under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.
Corporations can’t believe
LLCs can’t believe.
Sole proprietorship is a human and can believe
Partnerships between two or more humans can believe.
Basically, if you are a fictitious legal entity designed to limit liability; you are incapable of religious belief.
Very well reasoned, Dog.
I think you’re on to something, Doug……but one extension of that could be that if General Motors were a sole proprietership, refusal to sell cars to people because of their ethnicity (we’ll assume the 13th and 14th amendments were specific to race) based on some kind of Biblical interpretation binding on religious conscience could be justified, the Commerce Clause notwithstanding. There would seem to be something more than the presence or absence of legal fictions that ought to be involved here.
Well, at that point, you’re on to other sorts of balances. In your hypothetical, Mr. G. Motors, sole proprietor, has a gift for producing cars but racist religious inclinations. He has religious rights we ought to consider; but those are going to be balanced against other legal rights and interests.
On the other hand, if Mr. G. Motors is just a religiously racist shareholder of G.M., Inc., then Mr. Motors’ personal life simply shouldn’t enter the equation when we’re considering the legal interests of the corporation.
“……balanced against other legal rights and interests”. But I thought that only Second Amendment rights were absolute and off limits to any form of “balancing”. (Come to think of it, where does the term “balance” appear in the Federalist Papers related to the Bill of Rights?) (:
Where does it appear in the Magna Carta?
“Then, the question becomes, when do the moral beliefs of individual owners become relevant to the legal rights of the corporation?”
When the moral beliefs belong to a right wing nut job, silly you.
Guess I’m always over thinking things.
Another thought to throw in to the mix is if this issue goes before a judge, your assuming that the judge is going to actually going to decide this issue by using logic and applying the letter of the law. Ahhhhh we are talking Vulcan aren’t we?
Lets try this again for the non trekkies…
Another thought to throw in to the mix is if this issue goes before a judge, your assuming that the judge is going to actually going to decide this issue by using logic and applying the letter of the law. Ahhhhh we are talking about the planet Vulcan aren’t we? (Star Trek reference)
Live long and prosper, guy77money. (:
Informative and thoughtful discussion. Thanks.