Between The Lines - Frederick Clarkson: Supreme Court Ruling Allows Up to 90 percent of For-Profit Corporations to Impose the Owners' Religious Beliefs on Their Employees (Week Ending July 11, 2014)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

Supreme Court Ruling Allows Up to 90 percent of For-Profit Corporations to Impose the Owners' Religious Beliefs on Their Employees

Posted July 2, 2014

Interview with Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow with Political Research Associates, conducted by Scott Harris

In a landmark ruling in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores case, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on June 30 that allows the owners of some for-profit corporations to impose their religious beliefs on their employees when it comes to health care issues. The five justices of the court’s conservative majority held that family-owned businesses can deny their female workers contraceptives as part of their employee health insurance plan, when the owners object to certain forms of birth control required under the federal Affordable Care Act.

In an extension of the high court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that affirmed corporate personhood for the purpose of making unrestricted political campaign contributions, the conservative majority has now declared that incorporated businesses have the right to hold religious beliefs, just like natural born humans. While Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority emphasized that this ruling was narrow in scope, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her forceful dissent stated that this decision of “startling breadth" would allow corporations to opt out of almost any law that they find "incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs."

While some initial analysis of the ruling mistakenly minimized the effect of this decision to a small number of “closely held” corporations, upon closer examination it turns out that fully 90 percent of all businesses in the U.S. are family-owned, employing over 50 percent of the nation’s workforce. Closely held, or non-publicly traded corporations that potentially could take advantage of the ruling include companies such as Cargill, Dell, Heinz, Dole Foods, the Koch Industries, Publix supermarkets, Ernst & Young, Amway, Toys-R-Us, Hilton and Bloomberg. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow with Political Research Associates, who assesses the likely consequences of the Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.

FREDERICK CLARKSON: This is the first time in the history of the United States that a private, secular corporation has been granted religious rights under the First Amendment. It's an extraordinary development and that is probably where it's greatest significance is going to be over time, because, as we know, a Supreme Court decision comes down and a body of federal case law develops as a result of it. We don't know what that body looks like yet, but I would guess they would be related to that.

But the other thing that is lost in a lot of the coverage. And that is that this is not just about contraceptives – it's only about four contraceptives really. The insurance package that Hobby Lobby provides its employee is glad to provide coverage of 16 other kinds of contraceptives, including birth control pills. These are for four contraceptives as a matter of the religious beliefs of the owners of the company, they say cause abortions. Now these include emergency contraception and IUDs. Medical science and the American Medical Association and others say that's not true. They prevent fertilization of the egg, but not the implantation. And so, it's not an abortifacient according to medical science, but as a matter of religious belief, the Supreme Court has now said that a company can defy medical science and get an exempt from federal law, and that's an extraordinary development.

BETWEEN THE LINES: As you read the Constitution, and many other scholars' (writings), it seems that there is an erosion of the barrier between church and state. And in the long run, what is your concern about where this particular conservative majority on the Supreme Court could lead the country?

FREDERICK CLARKSON: Well, I think that the Hobby Lobby case – and some of the others – is an explicitly theocratic slant to the direction of American jurisprudence. If it stays headed in this direction, again it's a small wedge, but it's a wedge. Now that said, the church-state separation means religious freedom for everyone. We're all equal in the eyes of the law, regardless of our particular religious beliefs. Or non-beliefs. We all have equal standing. Government is to be the uncompromised guarantor of those rights and individual conscience.

Here, we have situations where, particularly in the case of Hobby Lobby, but also in the (McCullen v. Coakley Massachusetts abortion clinic) buffer zone case, where it's okay to discriminate against people and to bully individual's rights of individual conscience. And that's a bad direction in which we end up getting pitted against ourselves in terms of our religious beliefs, our general religious culture and even by state and by region.

There are places in the country where this kind of decision is more popular than others. And I think we're going to be seeing great state and regional tensions over this kind of stuff in the not-too-distant future.

BETWEEN THE LINES: On the issue of public opinion, as you said earlier, the Supreme Court decision here could inflame public opinion around the country in places where this kind of ruling against contraceptives through particular employers could have a lot of people angry at what was decided here. On the other hand, there will be some political impact, no doubt in the coming elections, where Republicans' objections to abortion and many politicians on the right's objections to even providing contraceptives will be an issue in the campaigning for Congress this November. Overall, where do you think public opinion is at, in a case like this?

FREDERICK CLARKSON: Well, I've already seen some polling because even in the New York Times, talking about the polls of 10,000 people, and people think that insurance should cover contraceptives, period. And that by a vast majority, something 53 to 37, something like that. At least in terms of generalized opinion, yeah. I don't think people are as animated about this as the political community is. But nevertheless, I think you're right. Coming into an election, this will be a polarizing and demagogue issue, and far out of proportion to what's actually involved, and it will be about whether the government should cover contraception and interfere with how Fox News will frame it.

But the larger issues of corporate personhood are probably the things that really need to be most talked about. And what is the religious freedom of a corporation? Will it go beyond the narrow decision that (Justice Samuel) Alito wrote? It seems likely, given that there's so many issues - the expansion of the notion of corporate personhood. So that's what I hope that people will be prepared to talk about more forcefully with candidates of both parties.

Frederick Clarkson is author of the book "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy." Find more information on Political Research Associates at politicalresearch.org.