Sandra Fluke Destroys 'Corporations Are People' Argument
Related article below...
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Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown University Law student who became a national face of the Affordable Care Act after Republicans denied her the right to speak on a panel, appeared on MSNBC's 'All In With Chris Hayes' on Tuesday.
Fluke, who now works as a social justice attorney, went head-to-head with the Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney about the new health care law's contraception mandate. Some employers may be exempt from the mandate based on religious or moral reasons. But Fluke said it was a bad idea to let companies chose what health care services they want to cover.
"It's a corporation picking and choosing what types of law they want to comply with," she said. "Our belief in this society has always been that we protect the liberty of individuals in their private lives, but that when you cross that line and go into the publics sphere and decide you want to operate as a company, make a profit off the public, you need to abide by public's laws."
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/sandra-fluke-corporations-are-people_n_4347217.html
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I fully support the assertion that for-profit businesses that take advantage of our free-market, all of the infrastructure such as highways, water/sewer, public utilities, a work force that is generally educated in public schools, and in most cases enjoy limited liability under our laws, should NOT be able to pick and choose the health insurance coverage they wish to offer an employee based on religious beliefs.
Today it is family planning/birth control to which they are opposed. Tomorrow? As was pointed out in the clip, some individuals don't believe in any form of medicine (preventive or acute), don't believe in transfusions, believe that HIV/AIDS is God's punishment for immoral behavior, are opposed to any form of surgery, etc.
If the Court holds that for-profit businesses (let's not just limit this to a business that is incorporated but other forms of private enterprise from LLPs, LLLC, etc.) may limit the types of coverage for which they will pay based on religious beliefs, many, many employees will be negatively affected.
Large publicly-traded companies won't be raising such concerns or limiting coverage for religious reasons. There are undoubtedly some that are unhappy with some of the minimum care requirements of the ACA. But in large part I don't see them being the issue.
The issue will be companies of any size that are owned by one or only a few shareholders (so-called "closely-held corporations"
. The owners of some of these companies undoubtedly do hold strong religious beliefs that conflict with some of the minimum coverage provisions of the ACA. Others will simply raise a belief in an effort to be difficult or deny their employees something.
But the religious challenge to the ACA is just a trojan horse. If they can succeed on this then the field is wide open for them to hold that they don't hire women to do a "man's work" because she should be at home barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen cuz that's what the Bible says. They can say they cannot hire a handicapped person because those with mental or physical challenges are that way because of God's will. They can say they don't have to hire an LGBT person or a person that may appear to be LGBT because it is an abomination.
They will use this religious trojan horse on contraception to usher in legalized discrimination on an unending scale.
