Center for Human Rights and Global Justice

Hobby Lobby, a company that should be merely an individual’s DIY-dream, has become a lawyer’s conundrum. To be precise, this puzzle emerges from the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) holding in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (Hobby Lobby) that the contraceptive mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) because it substantially burdens the religious beliefs of the three closely held corporations (CHCs) in the case. The Court thus placed Hobby Lobby Stores (Hobby Lobby), Mardel, and Conestoga Wood Specialty Corporation (Conestoga) at the intersection of two of the most thrilling social and legal debates of our times. Upon reading the Court’s decision, the lawyer — as well as the sensible hobby bricoleur — would wonder how far corporate “human” rights can and should go and whether such rights can and should be correlated to responsibilities. They would also consider a twisted variant of the separation of church and state question, and inquire to what extent the state should protect human rights from religious interference.

The judgment has important implications for human rights, in particular by weakening the protection of reproductive and healthcare rights, and by posing possible threats to freedom from discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. While the article engages with some of these consequences, its prime aim is to explore a more basic aspect: the type of entity which can hold and exercise religious views. It is this aspect which we identify as the source of potential socio-legal conflict in the United States. The analysis will compare SCOTUS’ reasoning on corporate form, profit-making objective, and limitations to religious exercise in Hobby Lobby to relevant jurisprudence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) mechanisms — the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Commission on Human Rights (EComHR). The comparative study therefore will allow us to provide answers to core questions: Whose right and who’s right? In other words, does a corporate right to exercise religion exist and is SCOTUS right in recognizing such protection to for-profit entities or the ECtHR in denying it.

Looking for inspiration outside the realm of US case law may prove a delicate endeavor, given the different structure of the ECtHR (as a supra-national court overseeing 47 sovereign states), and the reticence of certain circles in the US to recognize any comparative value to be gained from foreign judgments. Despite these caveats, the parallel between the two jurisdictions should provide a fuller account of how the interpretations on corporate religious freedom differ, and avenues for alternative interpretation.

RESUMEN: En este artículo los autores buscan volver a la recurrente discusión sobre la crisis de las instituciones centrales de la democracia liberal. Para ello, se propone un repaso de las ideas y principios fundamentales sobre los que se sustenta el ideal del Estado Moderno y la constante tensión entre un modelo que promueve el diálogo y otro que promueve la aclamación de un monarca. Esto a través de una novedosa lectura de la obra de Maquiavelo. Respecto de lo último, se desarrollarán aspectos de la crítica de Carl Schmitt al parlamentarismo como forma de Estado y se propondrá a continuación una visión alternativa del sustento sociológico sobre el cual la tesis de Schmitt parece descansar para postular el fracaso del ideal deliberativo en el Estado moderno.