I Don't Get It: Understanding Legal Stuff in the News

Understanding articles concerning legal issues are usually more challenging for me to understand than other articles one normally finds in a newspaper.  I came across a paragraph in the Wall Street Journal today which discusses the Freedom From Religion Foundation's desire to repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  In the paragraph, the author (James Taranto) of the article is responding to critics of the Supreme Court's decision a few days ago concerning the HHS Mandate and the use of contraceptives in the Hobby Lobby case.  Critics of the decision cry foul, noting that the logical outworking of this case will mean that, for example, Christian Scientists can now refuse psychological help to employees on the grounds of preserving conscience due to religious dogma.  Other examples would be refusing blood transfusions by Jehovah's Witness employers to their own employees, and so on.  The response to this criticism draws an important and distinctive line in what actually transpired in the Supreme Court's decision:

But the line the court drew wasn't between which mandates are subject to challenge under RFRA and which are not, only between the mandate at issue in this case and those that are not. It made a decision about the former and left the latter to be decided later if (and only if) someone raises such claims.

 Maybe you see why I had to stop, collaborate, and listen.  This paragraph is the most important one in the entire article, because it breaks down what the decision of the Court is all about.  If we can clarify this issue, we can settle the score once and for all.  Time for some exegesis.

First clause: "[those] mandates subject to challenge under RFRA and [those] which are not"

Second clause:  "the mandate at issue in this case and those [mandates which] are not."

The confusion for me in this text was understanding the actual line the court was drawing.  What is meant by "which mandates are subject to challenge under RFRA and which are not," as opposed to "the mandate at issue in this case and those that are not"?  This is the first key to understanding the paragraph--the concept of opposition.  We can then separate the two clauses from one another and set them as antipodal ideas.  Taranto says the First clause is not the subject of the Court in this decision, but that the Second clause is.  It will be helpful to unpack these clauses.  

 The first clause contains a plural, "mandates," while the second clause contains only one, a singular: "mandate."  In the case of the first clause, critics of the Court's decision are concerned with many different types of benefits one might receive from their health care plan, and they are drawing a "slippery slope" argument warning that if the Court allows for this decision in the Hobby Lobby case, then all kinds of companies and corporations can restrict health care to people based upon (possibly) arbitrary, dogmatic appeals grounded in religious beliefs and appeals to conscience.  In other words, the worry is that the Court had a long list of possible health care claims and decided which ones were subject to challenge under RFRA and which ones were not, e.g. blood transfusions are in, abortifacients are out, psychological aid for anxiety is in, but challenges from addition to pain killers are out.  There are therefore two possible scenarios the author is drawing for the reader.  First, there is the misunderstood scenario of the Court's decision, and second, there is the actual case of the Court's decision.  In the first case, when Taranto says "the line wasn't between which mandates are subject to challenge under RFRA and which are not," he means to say that we should not imagine the the Court was taking in a whole host of possible health care claims and separating the wheat from the chaff (the "ins" and the "outs").  No.  This wasn't a "macro" decision about all cases en toto.   This is not what the Court was deciding. 

The paragraph we're decoding contrasts this plurality of benefits with a singular--and specific--benefit (abortifacients).  Therefore, the line the Court is drawing is understood not as a general rule, axiom, or "in and out list" to be used against employees by their employers; rather, it is drawing a line on a particular, individual case (abortifacients) in terms of what the government can mandate a company to provide.  The Court therefore drew a distinction between general coverage as a general rule, and particular coverage for a specific benefit, and it argued and made a decision on the case of the latter, not the former.   

Second clause:  "the mandate at issue in this case and those [mandates which] are not."

I think what confused me in this paragraph was the double use of "are not."  "Which are not"..."those that are not."  What's the distinction drawn here, in this case?  It is the use of the negative that clarifies the argument by showing us what things are not subject to challenge by an appeal to RFRA.  It's helpful, ironically, if we go back to the laundry list of health care benefits.  In our case study, we have a corporation that takes a look at the many benefits and objects to one of those benefits (abortifacients).  What is not happening is a corporation looking at the whole of the list and objecting to the entity that is the list.  (That's a whole different issue that deals with the government's role in providing health care, socialism and free market relationships, etc.).  The corporation is looking at the list and saying it objects to one of the items on that list, and the reason for the objection is conscience rooted in religious beliefs.  Taranto clarifies for us when he writes, "It [the Court] made a decision about the former and left the latter to be decided later if (and only if) someone raises such claims."  By speaking about "former and latter," Taranto means the second clause coming after "only," because this is indeed the clause that describes what the Court actually did decide upon.  

Reworded for clarification: But the line the court drew was...between...the mandate at issue in this case and those [mandates subject to challenge under RFRA] that are not [subject to such challenge].  

Simplified: But the line the court drew was between the mandate at issue in this case--which is subject to challenge under RFRA--and mandates that are not.

We can see then, that the use of "those that are not" in the second clause leaves open the issue of future claims in health care benefits mandated by the government, where corporations must provide them to employees, or else pay the penalty which comes from committing a crime.  (That should scare you, that the government should be that big).  The Court therefore drew a line between the mandate at issue (abortifacients) and those issues that are not subject to challenge under the RFRA.  What would examples of issues not subject to challenge under RFRA be?  Well, whatever those issues are, abortifacients are included as issues which are indeed able to be submitted in a court of law, through the aid of RFRA, in order to relieve the conscience and freedom of corporations that do not feel comfortable providing such benefits to employees.  Abortifacients therefore, are not included as mandates not subject to challenge under RFRA.  Stated positively, abortifacients are included as benefits subject to challenge under RFRA; the government cannot force corporations to provide these benefits to employees under HHS.   And that is all that was decided by the Court.  

Some very important questions remain for Americas seeking liberty and freedom of conscience, while they also seek the common good: if there are future cases where HHS and RFRA are at loggerheads, how will the Court decide upon those future decisions?  What does the Hobby Lobby case mean for future corporations' objections to certain health benefits to employees where the employer objects to the benefit based upon religion and conscience?  A further question is this: what does this whole scenario say about the Government getting involved in health care as it pertains to corporations' rights to run their own businesses according to their conscience?  

 


Read the WJS artilce here; http://online.wsj.com/articles/best-of-the-web-today-repeal-rfra-1404417690