Courts & Law

Posted  by AzBlueMeanie:

"Corporations are people, my friend." – Willard "Mittens" Romney

Apparently the legal fiction of a corporate entity also enjoys rights far superior to the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to citizens by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is a brave new world of corporatocracy, my friends.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a legal challenge to the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) that mandates employer coverage of birth control,
arguing that it “trammels” the expression of religious freedom.

Wait, the legal fiction of a corporate entity has a "religion" (other than profits and shareholder dividends)? And it is free to impose its religious beliefs on its employees under some perverse notion of "religious liberty"?

This is the exact opposite meaning of religious liberty: it is a "get out of jail free card" for an employer to discriminate against its employees of other religious beliefs, or no religious beliefs, who do not share the corporate entity's "religious beliefs" — under the sanction of federal law, which would violate the "free exercise" clause of First Amendment religious liberty.

Steve Benen reports, Court rules against ACA contraception policy:

Birth-control opponents wonan especially significant round this morning.

The D.C. Circuit Court has upheld a legal challenge to the
provision of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that mandates employer
coverage of birth control, arguing that it “trammels” the expression of
religious freedom. While the legal process over the issue isn’t final,
the decision hands a huge political victory to conservative activists
that have long made this argument.

The ruling is online here (pdf).

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court set the stage Tuesday for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule this term on an abortion dispute over whether states may restrict doctors from prescribing the two drugs that are commonly used by women who seek an abortion in the first weeks of their pregnancy. Stage set for Supreme Court to rule on abortion<-inducing drugs:

The Oklahoma case could be the first test of whether the court’s
conservative majority will uphold the new state laws that seek to
strictly regulate legal abortions.

The legislatures in Oklahoma, Texas and several other states have adopted laws that require doctors to follow the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for the use of “any abortion-inducing drug.” The laws forbid doctors to prescribe medications for “off-label use.”

Sponsors of the laws said
they wanted to protect the health of women. But medical experts and
supporters of abortion rights said the law would effectively ban
medication abortions because the FDA protocol is outdated and conflicts
with current medical practice.

Only one drug — mifepristone or RU-486 — was approved by the FDA in
2000 for inducing early abortions. In the last decade, however,
physicians have regularly prescribed a second drug — misoprostol — to
complete such abortions through nine weeks of a pregnancy. They also
have prescribed RU-486 in much lower dosages.