Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood in 5-4 Decision
UPDATE 7/1 : The Catholic University of America's Mark Rienzi, who is also a lawyer for the Becket Fund, and won the McCullen v. Coakley "buffer zone" case in a unanimous decision from the U.S Supreme Court last week, offered some interesting points about yesterday's "landmark" decision on Hobby Lobby. Check it out here.
The Register will be providing breaking coverage of today's decision, as legal experts assess the ruling.
UPDATE:
The indispensable Ed Whelan at National Review's Bench Memos on the Hobby Lobby ruling here.
Toward the end of his post, Whelan addresses the still unresolved issue of whether this ruling will apply, at least in part, to a future SCOTUS decision on legal challenges filed by religious non-profits. He thinks the Court is sympathetic to the position of Catholic Charities and others that have filed suit against the mandate. He quotes Justice Alito:
We do not decide today whether [the accommodation] complies with RFRA for purposes of all religious claims. At a minimum, however, it does not impinge on the plaintiffs’ religious belief that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion, and it serves HHS’s stated interests equally well. (Emphasis added.)
Whelan's response:
There will be much parsing of this passage. I think that some mandate opponents, worried that a defeat is lying in this victory, will misread this passage. What I think that Alito is saying is that the objection to the accommodation is not to “providing insurance coverage” per se but rather to providing a self-certification that has the consequences of making the certifier morally complicit in the provision of objected-to drugs and devices. This issue is being, and will continue to be litigated, in the pending suits against the accommodation.
Indeed, it bears highlighting that the majority, in a footnote (footnote 9 on page 10) has offered an expansive reading of the relief that it afforded the Little Sisters of the Poor in the Little Sisters’ challenge to the accommodation: That order means that all “eligible organizations” must “be permitted to opt out of the contraceptive mandate by providing written notification of their objections to the Secretary of HHS, rather than to their insurance issuers or third-party administrators.” Together with the Court’s sound understanding of substantial burden, that proposition ought to provide gives high hopes for a victory to the challengers to the accommodation.

