Supreme Court Embraces Discrimination Against Women And Right-Wing Media Narratives In Hobby Lobby

Right-wing media are celebrating now that the conservative justices of the Supreme Court have issued their unprecedented ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, with the Court adopting a number of conservative myths in the decision that allows sex discrimination in the name of corporate religion.

On June 30, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court — five men and no women — held that “closely held” for-profit secular corporations like Hobby Lobby are exempt under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) from the “contraception mandate.” This so-called mandate, a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), requires employer-sponsored health insurance to cover comprehensive preventive health care, including birth control. In so holding, the Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby gave credence to some of the worst conservative myths that have been steadily advanced by right-wing media.

The fact that Hobby Lobby likely employs workers who have no moral or religious dispute with contraception didn’t seem to be of much concern to outlets like The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, or Fox News. From the start, NRO framed the case as a David and Goliath-like scenario, with the Green family owners of Hobby Lobby as victims of the federal government — despite the fact that Hobby Lobby is a massive corporation, owned by billionaires, with hundreds of stores across the country. Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck went so far as to call the contraception mandate evidence of the “moral decay” of the Obama administration’s policies. For right-wing media, the religious beliefs of the owners took precedence over those of their female employees. Apparently, the Supreme Court agreed.

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