The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision came out at about the same time I was pushing the Post button on last week’s Sift. In my neighborhood of the blogosphere, it’s all anybody’s been talking about ever since. Every time I thought I had seen all the important angles in the decision, some new article pointed out something I hadn’t noticed.
In my view, it’s kind of a sneaky decision. It appears limited to the particular facts of this case, but its logic has vast unexplored consequences that will play out — and already are playing out — in cases still to be decided. So the most extreme criticisms of the decision can easily be denied: Hobby Lobby doesn’t really do those horrible things, it just lays the groundwork for future decisions to do those horrible things. And the Court’s conservative majority will also be in a position to deny that those decisions are radical; they’ll just apply the precedents set in Hobby Lobby.
Explaining all that will take some time, both time this morning to finish the article and time as measured in words.
The Weekly Sift 