You have worked hard to build your closely-held family company
into a successful business. You provide generous compensation and
health benefits to your employees. In fact, your employee health
plans cover 16 types of birth control. The Patient Protection
Affordable Care Act ("ACA") requires, however, that you
pay for abortifacients like the "morning after pill."
This offends your strongly-held religious objection to abortion and
you believe the government cannot legally enforce this mandate, one
of the most controversial provisions of the ACA.
And so we see the conflict facing the U.S. Supreme Court in
Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius.
At issue is the constitutionality of the mandate, as applied to
for-profit, wholly secular corporations whose owners object to
providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. On one side,
can the government strip individuals of their religious liberties
simply for being a business owner? And on the other, should the
personal beliefs
