1. Please provide a summary of the facts of this case. Your summary should include what the Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel companies objected to as part of their religion. Your summary should also include how the federal government became a party to this case.
2. What statutory law passed by Congress was at issue in this case?
3. Which Constitutional law principle(s) were at issue here and what test did the Supreme Court apply? (rational basis scrutiny?)
4. How many contraceptives does the federal government require an employer health insurance plan provide and did the Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel have a company policy forbidding employees from using the four contraceptives at issue? Did the companies object to providing any form of contraceptives to their employees?
5. What was the Supreme Courts holding in this case?
6. What if a business owner studied scientific journals and came to the belief that a baby's life begins at conception, or shortly thereafter, and then objected to the provision of the four contraceptives in this case? Would they have a Constitutional argument they could make in order to protect their conscience if they were an atheist and did not recognize any form of religion?

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BURWELL, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL.

v

. HOBBY

LOBBY STORES, INC.,

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) prohibits the "Government [from]

substantially burden[ing] a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of

general applicability" unless the Government "demonstrates that application of the burden to

the person(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least

restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest." 42 U. S. C. 2000bb-

1(a), (b). As amended by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000

(RLUIPA), RFRA covers "any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a

system of religious belief." 2000cc-5(7)(A).

At issue here are regulations promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

under the Patient Protection and Aordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), which, as relevant here,

requires specied employers' group health plans to furnish "preventive care and screenings" for

women without "any cost sharing requirements,"42 U. S. C. 300gg-13(a)(4). Congress did not

specify what types of preventive care must be covered; it authorized the Health Resources and

Services Administration, a component of HHS, to decide. Nonexempt employers are generally

required to provide coverage for the 20 contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug

Administration, including the 4 that may have the eect of preventing an already fertilized egg

from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus. Religious employers, such

as churches, are exempt from this contraceptive mandate. HHS has also eectively exempted

religious nonprot organizations with religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive

services. Under this accommodation, the insurance issuer must exclude contraceptive coverage

from the employer's plan and provide plan participants with separate payments for

contraceptive services without imposing any cost sharing requirements on the employer, its

insurance plan, or its employee beneciaries.

In these cases, the owners of three closely held for-prot corporations have sincere Christian

beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to

contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point. In separate actions, they sued HHS and

other federal ocials and agencies (collectively HHS) under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause,

seeking to enjoin application of the contraceptive mandate insofar as it requires them to provide

health coverage for the four objectionable contraceptives.

As applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate

violate RFRA.

(a) RFRA applies to regulations that govern the activities of closely held for-prot corporations like

Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel.

(1) HHS argues that the companies cannot sue because they are for-prot corporations, and that the

owners cannot sue because the regulations apply only to the companies, but that would leave mer-

chants with a dicult choice: give up the right to seek judicial protection of their religious liberty or

forgo the benets of operating as cor

porations. RFRA's text shows that Congress designed the statute

to provide very broad protection for religious liberty and did not intend to put merchants to such a

choice. It employed the familiar legal ction of including corporations within RFRA's denition of

"persons," but the purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people

associated with the corporation, including shareholders, ocers, and employees. Protecting the free-

exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own

and control them.

(2) HHS and the dissent make several unpersuasive arguments.

.

(i) Nothing in RFRA suggests a congressional intent to depart from the Dictionary Act denition of

"person," which "include[s] corporations, . . . as well as individuals." 1 U. S. C. 1. The Court has

entertained RFRA and free-exercise claims brought by nonprot corporations. See,

e.g., Gonzales

v.

O

Centro Esprita Benefciente Unio do Vegetal

, 546 U. S. 418. And HHS's concession that a nonprot

corporation can be a "person" under RFRA eectively dispatches any argument that the term does not

reach for-proFt corporations; no conceivable deFnition of "person" includes natural persons and non-

proFt corporations, but not for-proFt corporations.

(ii) HHS and the dissent nonetheless argue that RRA does not cover Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and

Mardel because they cannot "exercise . . . religion." They oer no persuasive explanation for this

conclusion. The corporate form alone cannot explain it because RRA indisputably protects nonproFt

corporations. And the proFtmaking objective of the corporations cannot explain it because the Court

has entertained the free-exercise claims of individuals who were attempting to make a proFt as retail

merchants.

Braunfeld

v.

Brown

, 366 U. S. 599. Business practices compelled or limited by the tenets of

a religious doctrine fall comfortably within the understanding of the "exercise of religion" that this

Court set out in

Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore.

v.

Smith

, 494 U. S. 872, 877. Any

suggestion that for-proFt corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is

simply to make money ies in the face of modern corporate law. States, including those in which the

plainti corporations were incorporated, authorize corporations to pursue any lawful purpose or

business, including the pursuit of proFt in conformity with the owners' religious principles.

***

(3) inally, HHS contends that Congress could not have wanted RRA to apply to for-proFt corporations

because of the diculty of ascertaining the "beliefs" of large, publicly traded corporations, but HHS

has not pointed to any example of a publicly traded corporation asserting RRA rights, and numerous

practical restraints would likely prevent that from occurring. HHS has also provided no evidence that

the purported problem of determining the sincerity of an asserted religious belief moved Congress to

exclude for-proFt corporations from RRA's protection. That disputes among the owners of corporations

might arise is not a problem unique to this context. State corporate law provides a ready means for

resolving any conicts by, for example, dictating how a corporation can establish its governing

structure. Courts will turn to that structure and the underlying state law in resolving disputes.

.

(b) HHS's contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion.

(1) It requires the Hahns and Greens to engage in conduct that seriously violates their sincere religious

belief that life begins at conception. If they and their companies refuse to provide contraceptive

coverage, they face severe economic consequences: about $475 million per year for Hobby Lobby, $33

million per year for Conestoga, and $15 million per year for Mardel. And if they drop coverage

altogether, they could face penalties of roughly $26 million for Hobby Lobby,$1.8 million for

Conestoga, and $800,000 for Mardel.

***

(3) HHS argues that the connection between what the objecting parties must do at the end that they

Find to be morally wrong is too attenuated because it is the employee who will choose the coverage

and contraceptive method she uses. But RRA's question is whether the mandate imposes a

substantial burden on the objecting parties' ability to conduct business in accordance with

their

religious beliefs.

The belief of the Hahns and Greens implicates a dicult and important question of

religion and moral philosophy, namely, the circumstances under which it is immoral for a person to

perform an act that is innocent in itself but that has the eect of enabling or facilitating the

commission of an immoral act by another. It is not for the Court to say that the religious beliefs of the

plaintis are mistaken or unreasonable. In fact, this Court considered and rejected a nearly identical

argument in

Thomas

v.

Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div.

, 450 U. S. 707. The Court's

"narrow function . . . is to determine" whether the plaintis' asserted religious belief reects" an

honest conviction,"

id

., at 716, and there is no dispute here that it does.

Tilton

v.

Richardson

, 403 U. S.

672, 689; and

Board of Ed. of Central School Dist. No. 1

v.

Allen

, 392 U. S. 236, 248-249, distinguished.

(c) The Court assumes that the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged

contraceptive methods is a compelling governmental interest, but the Government has failed to show

that the contraceptive mandate is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.

(1) The Court assumes that the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged

contraceptive methods is compelling within the meaning of RRA.

(2) The Government has failed to satisfy RRA's least restrictive-means standard. HHS has not shown

that it lacks other means of achieving its desired goal without imposing a substantial burden on the

exercise of religion. The Government could,

e.g.,

assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives

to women unable to obtain coverage due to their employers' religious objections. Or it could extend

the accommodation that HHS has already established for religious nonproFt organizations to non-proFt

employers with religious objections to the contraceptive mandate. That accommodation does not

impinge on the plaintis' religious beliefs that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at

issue here violates their religion and it still serves HHS's stated interests.

Questions:

1)

Please provide a summary of the facts of this case. Your summary should include what the

Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel companies objected to as part of their religion. Your

summary should also include how the federal government became a party to this case.

2)

What statutory law passed by Congress was at issue in this case?

3)

Which Constitutional law principle(s) were at issue here and what test did the Supreme Court

apply?

(rational basis scrutiny?)

4)

How many contraceptives does the federal government require an employer health insurance

plan provide and did the Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel have a company policy

forbidding employees from using the four contraceptives at issue?

Did the companies object

to providing any form of contraceptives to their employees?

5)

What was the Supreme Courts holding in this case?

6)

What if a business owner studied scientiFc journals and came to the belief that a baby's life

begins at conception, or shortly thereafter, and then objected to the provision of the four

contraceptives in this case?

Would they have a Constitutional argument they could make in

order to protect their conscience if they were an atheist and did not recognize any form of

religion?