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Some hailed the decision as a victory for religious liberty, establishing that the government cannot ignore religious convictions and force business owners to facilitate what they view as murder. Others decried it as a massive setback for the rule of law, establishing a loophole by means of which business owners can ignore the legal rights of others with impunity. In reality, the decision may have less to do with business owners than either narrative suggests, and may have broader implications for other corporate constituencies. Last Term, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.,1 the Supreme Court held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)2 requires regulators to exempt closely held corporations whose owners have religious objections from a requirement to provide insurance coverage for four medications with the potential to prevent embryonic implantation. Although corporate standing served to vindicate the religious liberty of business owners in this case, the Court's reasoning justifies a right that is distinct from the rights of individual owners and that could potentially be grounded in the religious beliefs of a corporation's other constituencies.3
The background to the Court's decision is well known. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,4 issued a regulation requiring employers to provide medical insurance covering various types of preventive care.5 One of these types of preventive care was contraception.6 Four of the forms of contraception had the potential to destroy embryos by preventing them from implanting.7 The families that owned and controlled Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, two closely held for-profit corporations, believed that life begins at conception and held a religious conviction that they should not facilitate the death of human embryos.8 These families and their companies sought injunctions based on RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause9 that would prevent this portion of the mandate from being enforced against them.10 The Third Circuit denied Conestoga Wood's request for an injunction, the Tenth Circuit granted Hobby Lobby's request, and the cases were combined on appeal to the Supreme Court.11
Justice Alito, writing for the majority and joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas, held that the regulation's application to the corporations in question violated RFRA because it burdened a person's exercise...