Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014), was decided by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2014. The case arose from the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employer health insurance plans cover contraception, including certain methods (IUDs and emergency contraception) that Hobby Lobby's owners — the Green family, evangelical Christians — considered abortifacients, though medical consensus does not classify them as such. The Green family (David Green, founder; Steve Green, president) are major evangelical donors and funders. Their Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. (opened 2017) was funded primarily by Green family philanthropy and has been associated with attempts to mainstream evangelical historical revisionism about the Bible's role in American public life. The Green family settled a 2021 Department of Justice civil claim regarding the illegal importation and smuggling of ancient artifacts acquired for the Museum of the Bible. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented Hobby Lobby. The case was argued alongside Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Burwell (a Mennonite-owned company). Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 5-4 majority opinion, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas. The holding: - Closely-held for-profit corporations are 'persons' under RFRA and can assert religious freedom claims - The ACA contraception mandate substantially burdened Hobby Lobby's religious exercise - The government had less restrictive means available (e.g., the existing accommodation for nonprofit religious organizations) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent, joined by Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer, warning that the ruling opened a 'minefield' — any employer could potentially claim religious exemption from any law. The ruling's significance for this network: 1. It established for-profit corporations as entitled to religious liberty protections — dramatically expanding the potential universe of RFRA claimants. 2. It was the first major Supreme Court victory for the 'religious liberty' legal strategy that ADF, Becket, and their allies had been building since the mid-2000s. 3. It validated the ADF's theory of the case: that religious believers in commercial settings have constitutional/statutory protection against laws they find religiously objectionable. 4. It set the precedent that Masterpiece Cakeshop, Little Sisters of the Poor, and 303 Creative would build on. 5. It demonstrated the payoff of the Federalist Society judicial pipeline: the five-justice majority were all Republican-appointed, and three were Federalist Society members. The Heritage Foundation and FRC celebrated the ruling; the SBC's ERLC had filed an amicus brief in support of Hobby Lobby.

Documented themes

• Anti-LGBTQ
• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)

• influenced → Religious Liberty as Legal Strategy Pivot (2014) — The Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling (June 30, 2014) was the first major Supreme Court validation of the 'religious liberty' legal strategy, establishing that for-profit corporations could claim religious exemptions under RFRA and that such exemptions extended to employee benefit requirements. It became the foundational precedent for the post-Obergefell wave of religious liberty litigation.

Connections to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014)

• Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) influenced (2014) — The Alliance Defending Freedom's decade-long development of religious liberty litigation strategy — including the RFRA framework, the theory that religious exemptions extend to for-profit commercial activity, and the development of sympathetic defendant profiles — created the legal architecture that the Hobby Lobby case operationalized. While ADF did not directly represent Hobby Lobby (the Becket Fund did), ADF's parallel litigation pipeline developed the same legal theories.
• Manhattan Declaration (2009) influenced (2014) — The Manhattan Declaration's 2009 pledge of civil disobedience against laws requiring religious institutions to recognize same-sex marriage or provide abortion-related services established the ideological and rhetorical framework that the Hobby Lobby litigation operationalized in legal strategy. The Declaration's signatories — including Albert Mohler, James Dobson, and Tony Perkins — were the same organizational network that filed amicus briefs in support of Hobby Lobby.

Sources

• Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 — Supreme Court of the United States (2014)
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 145–165
• Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right — Randall Balmer (2021), pp. 135–160