re: CONTRACEPTION. A law of general applicability is not a free exercise infringement
unless its intent is to target free exercise, or it has that effect in some needlessly arbitrary dumb way.
Requiring that health insurance plans cover contraception is not an infringement of free exercise of religion... no more than peyote being illegal is an unconstitutional attack on native American belief systems.
Antonin Scalia settled this a while back in the peyote case. Religion is not a get out of jail free card. It is not a source of license to break laws just because one's religion disagrees with a generally applicable law that doesn't discriminate against any religion.
It's not like Christians are singled out in requiring that employers offer contraception coverage. It applies to all employers independent of religion.
The requirement serves a goal having nothing to do with religion, and exemptions would be a de facto establishment of religion... a relative benefit for religious business owners not available to non-religious business owners.
The government thinks peyote should be illegal, and has a rational basis for that. (Rational basis doesn't mean the government is right, just that it has some public good argument other than merely messing with Indians.)
It will be a horrible thing to see how Scalia manages to carve out an exception for his own extreme religious beliefs. But he surely will.
(Background: federal appeals court struck down contraceptive coverage element of Obamacare today)
