Do you have rights? or does your Boss?

Are for-profit companies persons entitled to First Amendment free religious exercise protections? Should the religious beliefs of the controlling stakeholders of your employing company dictate the healthcare you receive? Does providing healthcare to employees substantially burden a corporation's religious freedom when that healthcare includes contraception coverage? Those are the questions the US supreme court will address in its review of two cases brought by companies who don't want to pay for contraception under Obama's healthcare law. The court's answer could significantly alter the landscape of the American workplace and First Amendment rights forever – quite possibly in dangerous ways. The supreme court is hearing two of the 70 pending cases on the issue, one brought by the conservative Christian owners of a chain craft store with 15,000 employees of various faiths (the Hobby Lobby), and one brought by the Mennonite owners of a wood cabinet company.

No one debates that the owners of these companies have sincerely-held religious beliefs. The question is whether, by mandating that the companies provide healthcare for their employees, the religious beliefs of the company are being violated. On its face, it seems odd to even consider the question seriously. After all, no one is forcing the owners of the company to take contraception or purchase contraception. The belief in question – that certain types of contraception are "abortifacients" – is also far from scientific fact. Also, the company owners issue their employees a pay check and have no say over how the employees spend it; they have no say over the activities their employees participate in on a vacation day. It's certainly not violating the company's religious freedom for an employee to use the money paid to them by the company for a whole series of things that the company owner may find religiously objectionable, including buying contraception.

It's certainly not violating the company's religious freedom for an employee to use a company-issued vacation day to enjoy a whole series of things that the company owner may find religiously objectionable, including, say, a full-day contracepted sex-fest, a trip to Mecca or a pork barbecue. So why is it a problem for employees to use their health insurance for the care they and their doctors agree upon? The cases the supreme court will hear were brought under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which bars the government from "substantially burden[ing] a person's exercise of religion" unless that burden is justified by a "compelling reason". Free religious exercise is burdened when the government forces an individual to participate in activities that violate their religious beliefs, but not every infringement on religious beliefs is a substantial burden.

As the ACLU points out in their amicus brief to the supreme court, the contraception law doesn't force the owners of the Hobby Lobby craft store to violate their own religious beliefs. It requires them to cover health insurance, which may subsidize someone else's activities that violate the Hobby Lobby owners' religious values – but again, the same could be said for issuing a pay check. By refusing to cover contraception, the Hobby Lobby owners (and the owners of the other companies claiming the healthcare law infringes upon their religious freedom) are in fact using their own religious beliefs to deny benefits to their employees who may not share those beliefs at all.

That's not religious freedom; it's religious tyranny. The company heads bringing these claims want to have it both ways. By incorporating, owners and shareholders create separate entities and are not personally liable for their employees' salaries or health insurance costs – the entire point of incorporating is to create a legal entity separate from the individuals who created it. Yet these owners and shareholders want the court to consider their personal religious beliefs indistinguishable from those of the corporation, and allow those beliefs to dictate the kind of healthcare coverage their employees receive. Never before has the supreme court held that a for-profit corporation, rather than an actual person, has the right under the RFRA to refuse to abide by generally applicable laws and regulations. Doing so opens the door to a slew of issues:

If you work for a Christian Scientist who believes illness should be cured by prayer, are they obligated to cover medical care at all? Should for-profit companies be allowed to refuse to hire or cover healthcare for married women if they believe that it's a woman's religious duty to raise children and stay in the home? If you sincerely believe that Aids is God's punishment for homosexuality and promiscuity – a belief expressed by some of the most prominent members of the Christian right – should your company be able to opt out of covering HIV care for your employees? Since Obama's healthcare law also requires that employee health plans cover vaccinations, which some religious people oppose, should companies be allowed to refuse vaccine coverage for all employees and their dependents? Protecting the religious freedom of individuals is crucial. But at issue here isn't the religious freedom of individuals.

It's the ability of a corporation to dictate what kind of healthcare its employees have covered, under the guise of the stated religious views of the company owners. And don't be fooled; this is more about the current political tides than long-held religious values. The constitutional issues at play here aren't all that grey. But the supreme court's calculus is made more complex simply by virtue of the issue being attached to the controversial Affordable Care Act. Notably, the Hobby Lobby used to have an employee insurance plan that covered the very same birth control methods it now claims violate its religious freedom. It wasn't until the GOP raised a stink about the contraception rules in Obama's healthcare legislation that the Hobby Lobby "re-examined" its insurance policies.

Is the religious belief sincerely held? Probably. But it's as much political and cynical as it is faith-based. Similar cases have been tried in appeals courts and the supreme court itself, but in instances where individuals and not companies claimed a law violated their free exercise of religion. One woman, a Quaker, claimed that federal income taxes violated her religious freedom under the RFRA; the supreme court disagreed. In another case a religiously-affiliated school gave male employees a "head of household" supplement not offered to female employees because, according to their sincerely-held religious views, men should be the family's breadwinner. The fourth circuit held that the supplement violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and that paying female employees in compliance with the FLSA had no impact on the school's "freedom to worship and evangelize as they please". In yet another case, public university students claimed that registration fees violated their rights under the RFRA, since the university's health insurance program covered abortion care. The ninth circuit also rejected the students' claims. Health insurance should be no different. The federal government should have no right to dictate that individuals engage in activities that violate their religious beliefs.

But individuals shouldn't have a right to impose their religious beliefs on their employees and deny them federally-mandated benefits. With any luck, the supreme court will address the root issues of these cases on their merits and in accordance with existing religious freedom jurisprudence. The GOP and the religious right are banking on the opposite: That the conservative and moderate justices, troubled by both Obamacare and the very mention of the word "abortion", will find some convoluted way of justifying religiously-motivated discrimination under the guise of "religious freedom". Do you even know the details of the religious beliefs held by your company's controlling shareholder? Cross your fingers you don't find out the hard way – when they start making healthcare decisions for you and your family.