re: Hobby Lobby ruling expected tomorrow--all eyes on Roberts

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Today is a huge day for individual liberty.

Along with the Hobby Lobby case the second and not so publicized but nonetheless very important case of Harris v. Quinn:
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the Court is considering whether a group of home health care providers who work for the state of Illinois can be required to provide financial support to a union that represents them.


LINK

I'm not very optimistic

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As Harvard law professor Benjamin Sachs has explained, there are several possible outcomes in Harris v. Quinn. The court could simply affirm the lower court's ruling, in which case labor's lost sleep would be all for naught. Or, in a blow to unions that represent home care workers like Harris, the court could rule that such workers are employed by individuals and aren't really state employees. In that case, they wouldn't be covered by Abood and could no longer be required to pay union fees.

But another outcome -- albeit one that appeared unlikely during oral arguments -- is that the justices could embrace the plaintiffs' broad First Amendment argument, in what would be a disastrous case for organized labor at large. Such a decision could give public-sector workers throughout the U.S. the ability to opt out of paying fees to the unions that bargain for them, thereby instituting a kind of right-to-work on the public sector.

There's a reason labor unions combat right-to-work laws so doggedly in states across the country: When given the choice to stop supporting the union, many workers do so.

Although the unionization rate has steadily tumbled to just 6.7 percent of the U.S. private sector, union density in the public sector has held strong for decades. Today, more than one-third of such workers are still unionized, and public-sector unions remain a major force in U.S. policy and politics.

The Supreme Court -- to the fear of union leaders, and to the glee of those on the right who loathe public-sector unionism -- has the potential to change all that on Monday.

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How about we let the government or our employers provide

what kind of food we eat,

(transfats, salt limitations, nutrition labeling requirements)

where we live,

(CRA, EPA regs, wetlands COE)

even government-made entertainment

(NPR, "the arts")

and that way they'll have ALL our "basic human rights" covered and we won't even need wages. Sounds like a goddamn eutopia to me man.

(The fact that ANY of this is deemed constitutional is an affront to the Founding Fathers)

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Holy shite how can people like you even breathe? Photosynthesis? Americans are slowly being replaced by a breed of plant that looks and makes sounds like humans, but are actually just mobile cucumbers with the power of mimicry.

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What time do the rulings come out? 11am if I remember correctly?

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House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., speaking on "Fox News Sunday," predicted the Supreme Court would rule against Hobby Lobby.

"I believe that the Supreme Court will find that no business ... should be allowed to [discriminate] against women," he said. "The owner has a right to his or her religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean you get to discriminate against women if [they] have different beliefs than what the owner has."

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