Project 3: Corporations And Religious Faith (Team Project) Project 3: Corporations And Religious Faith (no Team Project)- independent project

Introduction: While corporations are not humans, they have legal and political rights. Do they also have a First Amendment right that “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise” of their religion? Let’s analyze corporations and religious faith looking closely at Case Study 5.4. of your text. Directions: Go to page 191 of the Shaw text and locate Case 5.4. entitled Corporations And Religious Faith. Read the case several times and thoroughly. As a team, develop an analysis paper based on the following sections: 1. An overview of the facts of the case 2. The significant facts of the case. 3. The roles of the players (not just their names, but their ROLES) 4. A brief summary of the major ethical issues(s) of the case 5. A full analysis using only consequentialist/non-consequentialist outlooks. 6. A full analysis using only a utilitarianism outlook. 7. A full analysis using only Kant’s outlook. 8. A comprehensive analysis that identifies commonalities and differences arrived at by using the different outlooks. 9. Your final recommendations, with a comprehensive discussion of how and why you arrived at this set of recommendations after considering the outcomes of all different outlooks. Divide your paper into nine parts answering the nine (9) sections and include an introduction and a conclusion to the analysis of this case. Use the Shaw text as a reference and include, at least, 5 outside academic sources to your analysis. All students will be accountable for at least one core section of each project as well as responsible to support group work to ensure project completion. Each member will put their name on the front page and the section for which they are accountable. This assignment is graded according to whether you have thoroughly answered each of the questions and included all required elements. Case 5.4 Corporations and Religious Faith In 2012 the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health-care reform law. That law requires that employer-sponsored health care policies include contraceptive coverage. This is in line with a 2002 EEOC ruling that companies that provide prescription benefits to their employees but not birth control violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on grounds of sex. Although the Obama administration has exempted religiously affiliated nonprofit employers, such as Catholic charities, from financing contraceptive coverage, for-profit companies remain bound by the requirement. Two for-profit companies, however, are challenged the rule—Hobby Lobby Stores, an arts-and-crafts chain, and Conestoga Wood Specialities, which makes kitchen cabinet doors. Based on their Christian religious beliefs, the owners of the companies oppose certain forms of contraception, such as the morning-after pill and various intrauterine devices (IUDs). That’s because they believe that life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg and that these forms of contraception violate the right to life of the fertilized egg by preventing it from attaching to the lining of the uterus, thus making them equivalent to abortion. In June 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, upheld Hobby Lobby’s position. It ruled that a corporation, as a form of association, has a right to espouse its religious beliefs regardless of its profit-seeking status. The Green family, who own the company, formed it with the “intent to provide goods and services while adhering to Christian standards as they see them, and they have made business decisions according to those standards.” The Court continued: Would an incorporated kosher butcher really have no claim to challenge a regulation mandating non-kosher butchering practices? … A religious individual may enter the for-profit realm intending to demonstrate to the marketplace that a corporation can succeed financially while adhering to religious values. As a court, we do not see how we can distinguish this form of evangelism from any other. As the Court sees it, the owners of a company do not lose their right to follow their religious beliefs by incorporating, and it rejects the “notion that Free Exercise rights turn on Congress’s definition of ‘non-profit.’” A month later, however, a different appellate court—the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals—ruled against the Hahn family, who own Conestoga Wood Specialities, holding that “secular, for-profit corporations cannot engage in religious exercise.” Although the owners may have a sincere religious objection to contraceptives that act on the fertilized egg, the Court reasoned, the owners are not identical with the corporation; it is a distinct legal entity. The Affordable Care Act does not require the Hahns to do anything. The responsibility for complying with the act falls on the corporation. “The fact that one person owns all of the stock does not make him and the corporation one and the same person, nor does he thereby become the owner of all the property of the corporation.” … The Hahn family chose to incorporate and conduct business through Conestoga, thereby obtaining both the advantages and disadvantages of the corporate form…. The free exercise claims of a company’s owners cannot “pass through” to the corporation. The Court also rejected the contention that the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United extended not just political rights but also religious rights to corporations. In both cases, the courts were concerned not only with the First Amendment but also with the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. That law sought to nullify a high court ruling that the state of Oregon could deny unemployment benefits to people for using illegal drugs even if the drug in question (peyote) was being used as part of a Native American religious ceremony. The RFRA provides, as a general rule, that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.” It can restrict a person’s exercise of religion only if it has a compelling interest in doing so and if there is no less restrictive means of furthering that interest. With the two appellate courts in disagreement, the Supreme Court was forced to weigh in. It did so in July 2014, ruling 5-to-4 that requiring the two family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception violated the RFRA. The court held that for-profit corporations are “persons” within the meaning of the RFRA, that requiring the companies in question either to provide contraceptive coverage or to pay substantial fines constitutes a substantial burden on their religious liberty, and that there were other “less restrictive” ways that the government could ensure access to contraceptive care. For their part, the four dissenting judges were worried about the broad implications of the decision, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arguing that “its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private,” potentially allowing them to object on religious grounds not only to any kind of contraception but also to “health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage, or according women equal pay for substantially similar work.” A Final Note Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood say that they do not oppose most common forms of contraception, such as condoms, diaphragms, sponges, and birth control pills, because these techniques do not violate the right to life of a fertilized egg. Contrary to what the companies believe, though, IUDs (and, in most cases, emergency contraception pills) do not, scientists say, work by aborting a fertilized egg; rather, they prevent fertilization in the first place. If this is correct, then the companies’ legal complaint would seem to rest on a false factual premise. That’s something the Supreme Court never considered. Discussion Questions 1. Although corporations are not human beings, they have a number of legal and political rights. Do they also have a First Amendment right that “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise” of their religion? If so, was that right violated in this case? 2. Is it possible for corporations to have religious beliefs, or can only human beings have such beliefs? If corporations can be said to have religious beliefs, are those beliefs the same as the beliefs of the owners? What if there is not a single owner, but a number of different stockholders? What about the religious beliefs of the managers or employees—are they relevant to determining what the corporation believes? 3. The Hahns have a right to exercise their religion. Does this right transfer to any corporations they own? 4. Are corporations “persons”? Do you think that Congress intended the RFRA to apply to corporations? 5. Does the requirement that their health care policies include contraception impose a “substantial burden” on these companies’ exercise of religion? Explain why or why not. 6. Both companies are privately held, meaning that their shares do not trade on the stock market. Does this fact affect the issue? If so, how?