Federal Judge Richard Kopf, who was appointed to a U.S. District Court in Nebraska by George H.W. Bush, slammed the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision in his personal blog, Hercules and the Umpire, and told the judges to “stfu.”
He said that the court’s ruling looked bad, as the majority opinion was signed on to by five male, Catholic judges appointed by a Republican president.
“To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse,” he wrote. “The decision looks misogynist because the majority were all men. It looks partisan because all were appointed by a Republican. The decision looks religiously motivated because each member of the majority belongs to the Catholic church, and that religious organization is opposed to contraception.”
Kopf argued that the Supreme Court should have left the case alone, and should stay far away from controversial issues.
“Next term is the time for the Supreme Court to go quiescent–this term and several past terms has proven that the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids says [sic], it is time for the Court to stfu,” he wrote.
When you’re so against providing contraceptive to your female employees that you take your case all the way to the Supreme Court, you better make sure your business dealings and squeaky clean and represent those strong beliefs. Hobby Lobby’s business dealings are not squeaky clean.
Claiming religious beliefs, Hobby Lobby took issues with the Obamacare provision requiring contraception be part of an employee’s health care package. They took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and earlier this week the Supreme Court agreed that, base on Hobby’s religious beliefs, the company did not have to provide contraception to its employees. But when Mother Jones did some digging a few months ago, they found out that Hobby Lobby is making millions of dollars from… get this… contraception!
Mother Jones found that Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan had more than $73 million invested in companies that produced emergency contraception pills. It was that same type of birth control that Hobby Lobby said it had an objection to when it took its case to the Supreme Court. CNN needed some answers and put Hobby Lobby and their hypocrisy on full blast!
Enter CNN host Ashleigh Banfield.
“The critics are calling Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) investments hypocrisy at its finest,” Banfield emphasized on Wednesday, adding that CNN had not gotten an explanation from the company after giving it “plenty of time” to respond.
“I don’t even know where to begin on this one,” the CNN host remarked. “I kept thinking to myself, this had to be an accident. But then I thought, it’s no accident when you are in the middle of the biggest political storm — all the way to the Supreme Court — and, yet, your guys aren’t aware of what your investments are in your very, very large 401(k)?”
CNN Business Correspondent Alison Kosik said that it was possible that Hobby Lobby’s investments in contraception makers could have initially been an oversight, but she noted that the company could ask its mutual fund manager to forbid investments in certain companies.
“It would mean that Hobby Lobby employees would most likely have higher fees,” Kosik pointed out. “But if you ask me, my thought is, if they’re that fervent about upholding their biblical principles, maybe that should include their investments to.”
“That’s putting their money where their mouth is,” she concluded.
People are upset, MAD I tells ya! This Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court has people up in arms and they’re looking for a way to vent. So what better place to vent your displeasure than to attack @SCOTUSblog?
Well, I would attack too, except, @SCOTUSblog is not the blog for the Supreme Court. It is in no way affiliated with the United States Supreme Court Justices. @SCOTUSblog is just a blogsite dedicated to reporting on The Supreme Court’s decisions. The site is in no way responsible for the court, its failed justices or the court’s decision.
But don’t tell that to these angry Twitter users. They found the @SCOTUSblog twitter handle and they’re letting them know how disappointed and angry they are with the Hobby Lobby decision. And @SCOTUSblog is having some fun with it!
Now let’s watch you try MT @noahtron watching @SCOTUSblog spin trying to cover their asses after today’s ruling is unrepentant visible smarm
Thurs. No, wait—Fri MT @Closetrighty: @SCOTUSblog can you at least tell me when your agents will confiscating my gf’s birth control. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) July 1, 2014
Or when bloggers decide the law? MT @alyssaanton: @SCOTUSblog proves democracy cannot work when leaders are appointed instead of elected.
We prefer them as our editor & manager. RT @Allout1 I guess @SCOTUSblog wants women barefoot, pregnant and cooking dinner. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2014
A two-fer wrapped up with a bow in one single package. MT @CharlaneBrady: @SCOTUSblog You are an embarrassment and threat to human rights.
The Tea Party and most social conservatives can sleep easily throughout the summer now. The two Supreme Court decisions rendered on Monday should delight the right and make the inaction across the street in the Capitol seems like a mere distraction. Like a fly buzzing around the collective government heads. The conservative revolution has been won, and all it took was five justices and very little money.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the court affirmed that not only are corporations people, they also have religious rights that can be exercised on health care issues. Yes, Justice Samuel Alito did say that he didn’t expect the floodgates to open on religious issues, but just look at what the Court’s decision on marriage equality did to even conservative states. Lower courts have run riot over anti-gay marriage laws to the tune of 17 states, many of which are in the most conservative areas of the country. Does Justice Alito really think that lower courts will demure when it comes to challenges on religious grounds? I don’t.
But just as this Court has affirmed the highest aspirations of the conservative movement, and, I’m sure, cemented the idea that Madison, Adams, Jay and Hamilton would have agreed with them, they are just doing what the liberal courts did in the 1950s through 1970s. Remember that the court found a right to privacy in the 1968 Griswold case, and used that right, which appears nowhere in the Constitution, to decide Roe v. Wade. The Warren court did the same with Brown, basing it on previous, smaller cases that affirmed what the justices believed to be correct decisions.
Alito, clearly the more articulate conservative compared to Antonin Scalia, who just wants to rant, also wrote the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, the day’s other liberal-bashing case. Here, he and the conservative majority said that some public employees do not have to pay union fees even if they don’t want to actually join the union that represents their field. For example, in New Jersey, public school teachers who don’t join the teacher’s association still have to pay 85% of the association fees because the association represents and negotiates for these teachers. Alito created a new category of worker, a partial public employee who works for both the government and a private person who hired them, and said that this type of employee was exempt from representation fees.
This decision is not major in the sense that it covered a great deal of people, but it does open up the gates to further challenges to unions and laws that require people to pay a representation fee. The next case could give the conservatives an opening to expand the definition to part-timers or support staff or, to be honest, any other public worker. Alito doesn’t like unions. It’s not just the law; it’s personal.
While President Obama and the right wing Republicans duke it out over language and politics, the Supreme Court is moving full steam ahead to craft a country that looks more like 1814 than 2014. The biggest problem, though, is that the former generation had Chielf Justice John Marshall to guide it. We get Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
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