As I explained in the previous post, the problem is that imposing a mandate on the corporation necessarily imposes one on its owners as well. Like any other organization, a corporation has no purposes of its own separate from those of the people who own and control it. This becomes even more clear in David’s effort to separate out the case of nonprofit religious corporations, which, he claims are firms that “unlike all others, do.. have religious beliefs, and do… exercise those religious beliefs.” But of course a nonprofit firm as such cannot have beliefs any more than Hobby Lobby can. Belief requires consciousness, and no inanimate entity has that. But the owners of both nonprofit and for-profit corporations do have beliefs, and do exercise them. And one of the ways in which they do so is by honoring religious constraints on the ways in which they use their property. Similarly, a restaurant does not and cannot have religious beliefs. But if the owner happens to be an Orthodox Jew, a law requiring him to serve nonkosher food in that restaurant would burden his free exercise of religion. The government could not get around that by claiming that it was merely imposing a mandate on a building that has no beliefs of its own. Just as people can speak through corporations that they control even though the corporations have no beliefs of their own to express, so too they can use a corporation to adhere to religious beliefs.
Contributor, The Volokh Conspiracy
July 10, 2014 at 6:51 p.m. UTC
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