Religion Is Your Business
Photo Credit: National Review Religious freedom used to mean that religion was none of the government’s business. Now it is being changed to mean that religion is none of your business.
Pundits such as law professor Adam Winkler insist that the Supreme Court should rule against the Hahn and Green families and their businesses in next week’s Obamacare cases. Their theory is that if you engage in business, religion is not “essential” to your work. Instead, you can pursue only “profit.”
Says who? Not American law or any authority that Winkler or the government can cite. Winkler simply asserts that religion and business don’t belong together; therefore, family businesses have no right to pursue religion. Winkler even ignores Hobby Lobby’s co-plaintiff in this case, Mardel, a Christian-bookstore business.
Every relevant legal authority contradicts Winkler’s view that religion can have no place in business. The laws of all 50 states and the District of Columbia explicitly allow businesses to pursue all lawful purposes. Religion is still lawful in America, however much some may lament it.
No Supreme Court case says that when a family engages in business, it cannot also pursue its religious beliefs. Instead, whenever the high court gets close to this question, it repeatedly rules that groups such as Jewish merchants and Amish farmers exercise religion while simultaneously pursuing profit, and that they can therefore bring religious-freedom claims. This doesn’t mean that the businesses always win their claims, but it does mean that religion can be exercised in business.
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