Questions - If Hobby Lobby and other companies gain religious exemption clause from regs and laws...

[haele]

5. Different religious exemption situation. Similar to individual conscientious objectors.

My understanding is that the difference here is with secular organizations regulations and obligations v. regulation of sectarian organizations where there is a closed membership or association. Similar to Priests, Nuns, and specified lay people working at a Catholic church; the assumption is that their common religious beliefs is what creates the organization they choose to live in.

This is not present a situation of employee and employer, where there is an implication of a power structure that is only in place when there is a contract to provide services for labor; anything outside of that contract cannot be used by the employer to control the employee, and there is no mutual or communal bond outside the workplace that needs to be respected.

Not that I would have any problems arguing against the current Amish ability to "opt out".
But because they have already created a private religious community structure that is exclusionary, so long as they do not impose that structure on people who have not agreed to live within that structure and respect secular laws and regulations, they have been able to claim certain exemptions under accepted Constitutional framework.

Similarly, one can make opt out comparisons to the Military, or certain municipal and/or organizational pension systems, that have in the past been able to opt out of Social Security, Medicaid, and other regulatory programs or taxes.

Haele