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Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to for-profit corporations and, on that basis, it allowed Hobby Lobby to omit otherwise mandated contraceptive coverage from its employee healthcare package. Critics argue that the Court’s novel expansion of corporate rights is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic principles of corporate law. In particular, they contend that the decision ignores the fact that the corporation, as an artificial entity, cannot exercise religion in its own right, and they decry the notion that the law might look through the corporate …
Why Personhood Matters, Tamara R. Piety
Why Personhood Matters, Tamara R. Piety
Tamara R. Piety
One of the most controversial aspect of the Supreme Court's decisions in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby is its treatment of corporate personhood. Many members of the public object to the notion that corporations should have the same rights as human beings. Yet many scholars claim that this concern is misplaced. In this article I argue that concern about corporate personhood is not misplaced because the personhood metaphor conceals the degree to which there has not been an adequate justification given for extending fundamental rights to corporations. Focusing on personhood allows us to push on the metaphor to ask whether …
Privacy And Organizational Persons, Eric W. Orts, Amy Sepinwall
Privacy And Organizational Persons, Eric W. Orts, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
This Article responds to an argument made recently by Elizabeth Pollman that corporations should not be deemed to have “constitutional privacy rights” in “most circumstances.” Setting forth an alternative conception of organizational rights and examining different meanings of “privacy,” the Article contends that courts should tread more carefully and that it may often be sensible and recommended to allow corporations and other organizations to assert some constitutional “rights of privacy.” More specifically, the Article suggests that organizations may enjoy “primary” rights, which reside with the organizations in the first instance or “secondary” rights, which are asserted by an organization to …