On That ‘Narrow’ Hobby Lobby Ruling
The corporate media and its overseers allies in the American Right Wing are desperately trying to strike an untenable balance between claiming Victory in the War For Religious Liberty while simultaneously playing down the far-ranging, civil rights-shredding implications of the Supreme Court’s retrogressive Hobby Lobby ruling.
To that end, they’ve latched on to the terms “closely-held” and “family-run” — as in, “closely-held, family-run corporations” like Hobby Lobby — in the hope that these talking head-friendly terms wield totemic powers that minimize the negative consequences of Roberts Court judicial activism.
For example, the Chicago Tribune, long one of the country’s bastions of media conservatism, assures readers “the ruling is narrowly tailored,” citing Justice Samuel Alito’s “doubt that the Congress … would have believed it a tolerable result to put family-run businesses to the choice of violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
“Family-run businesses.” This will be the Right Wing’s rhetorical earworm — we’ll be hearing it ad nauseam, count on it.
Even by the standards of American conservatism, “family-run business” is a profoundly deceitful construction, one intended to call forth visions of Mom-and-Pop five-and-dimes in Anytown, U.S.A., but which actually encompasses firms like Dell Computers, Del Monte Foods, Dole Foods, Foster Farms, Heinz, Hilton, Koch Industries, Kohler Plumbing, Levi Strauss, SC Johnson, Sports Authority, Toys ‘R’ Us, and (rather unsurprisingly) Tribune Media, companies that wield infinitely more market power than the gentle term, “family-run business” would suggest — which is precisely why the Right and its subordinates on the Roberts Court are trying so desperately to minimize Hobby Lobby‘s impact.
Three scholars — Venky Nagar (University of Michigan Ross School of Busines), Kathy Petroni (Michigan State University Eli Broad College of Business), and Daniel Wolfenzon (Columbia Business School) — have analyzed “closely-held corporations,” and what they find shines a bright light on the wink-wink, nudge-nudge deception that is at the heart of the Hobby Lobby ruling.
In “Governance Problems in Closely-Held Corporations (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, vol. 46, no. 1, August 2011), the three authors point out:
…the vast majority of firms in the U.S. are closely-held corporations. The latest Census indicates seven million corporate tax filers, of which only about 8,000 are public firms. Closely-held corporations … produce 51 percent of the private sector output and employ 52 percent of the labor force.
In other words, fifty-two percent of the American labor force is now covered by the Roberts Court’s unprecedented expansion of corporate personhood. Indeed, by one estimate, 90 percent of all businesses in the United States are “closely-held corporations.”
Alito’s blithe assurances that Hobby Lobby won’t unleash a tsunami of “religious freedom” claims are predictably specious; as Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in United States v. Windsor (2013) — and even earlier in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) — the “fact” that a case turns on a “narrow” question is irrelevant in terms of its broader social impact. He was right, which is one reason why we’ve seen anti-gay legislation crumbling nationwide.
We can expect the same nationwide effects from the “narrow” ruling in Hobby Lobby.
Click here for reuse options!Copyright 2014 Liberaland
By: Russ Burgos
Interested in foreign affairs, global conflict, and political narratives and discourses
12 responses to On That ‘Narrow’ Hobby Lobby Ruling
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William July 1st, 2014 at 07:43
We need some new blood in the Supreme Court.
M D Reese July 1st, 2014 at 11:34
Wouldn’t that be fun!
William July 1st, 2014 at 13:01
More fun than Palin and Bachmann playing Jeopardy?
M D Reese July 1st, 2014 at 13:35
I’m SOOO glad I did not have a mouthful of tea when I read that!
You know, they are both such wordsmiths, how about a game of Scrabble? Or in Palin’s case, Scramble…
William July 1st, 2014 at 07:43
We need some new blood in the Supreme Court.
M D Reese July 1st, 2014 at 11:34
Wouldn’t that be fun!
William July 1st, 2014 at 13:01
More fun than Palin and Bachmann playing Jeopardy?
M D Reese July 1st, 2014 at 13:35
I’m SOOO glad I did not have a mouthful of tea when I read that!
You know, they are both such wordsmiths, how about a game of Scrabble? Or in Palin’s case, Scramble…
arc99 July 1st, 2014 at 11:24
There will be one way and one way only to even begin figuring out how to fix this. As I mentioned yesterday, just as city council prayer advocates changed their tune in a hurry when a Wiccan priest sought to deliver an invocation, right wingers change their minds in an instant when they are on the short end of the stick they poke at other people.
It will take a closely held company owned by leftists or Muslims who due to their own deeply held moral values deny some benefit to their employees. The howls of indignation from the right wing noise machine will be swift and loud.
I have to wonder how our brave new theocratic world will permit employers to deny employment completely to people whose lifestyles violate their “deeply held moral convictions”. Racial discrimination is against the law, for now. Religious discrimination is against the law, for now. I say, for now, because I no longer take anything for granted as right wingers do their level best to drag us back to the 19th century.
But I see no statute which prevents an employer from simply refusing to hire gun-owners based on the company owners’ “deeply held moral convictions”. I would love to watch the sh*t hit the fan on that one.
mea_mark July 1st, 2014 at 11:49
Gun Lovers Need Not Apply — Love it!
arc99 July 1st, 2014 at 11:24
There will be one way and one way only to even begin figuring out how to fix this. As I mentioned yesterday, just as city council prayer advocates changed their tune in a hurry when a Wiccan priest sought to deliver an invocation, right wingers change their minds in an instant when they are on the short end of the stick they poke at other people.
It will take a closely held company owned by leftists or Muslims who due to their own deeply held moral values deny some benefit to their employees. The howls of indignation from the right wing noise machine will be swift and loud.
I have to wonder how our brave new theocratic world will permit employers to deny employment completely to people whose lifestyles violate their “deeply held moral convictions”. Racial discrimination is against the law, for now. Religious discrimination is against the law, for now. I say, for now, because I no longer take anything for granted as right wingers do their level best to drag us back to the 19th century.
But I see no statute which prevents an employer from simply refusing to hire gun-owners based on the company owners’ “deeply held moral convictions”. I would love to watch the sh*t hit the fan on that one.
mea_mark July 1st, 2014 at 11:49
Gun Lovers Need Not Apply — Love it!