A belated thanks for including me in this symposium:  I'm very much enjoying and learning from the various posts.

One additional comment that I'd like to make concerns the designations of "right" and "left" and how these political frames shape our discussion of Supreme Court opinions.  There is no doubt that we live today in a world of Kulturkampf with the rise of fundamentalist religions apparently everywhere:  from Texas to the Middle East.  However, I think that actually reading the opinions of the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby suggests that it would be helpful at least for academics sometimes to cease fire.

I am accused now of being on the "left" because I argue that employees should be considered as part of a corporation (or other business firms of more than fifteen employees) with respect to religious claims that support women employees' coverage for contraception under a national health care law.  See Brett McDonnell's post here.  But the logic of my position is not "left" or "right."  My argument that employees should be considered as legitimate members of corporations for many purposes would also protect the claims of fundamentalist Christians or others with whom I may disagree religiously.  Take, for example, the Braunfield and Gallagher cases that I mention in my first post in this symposium.  And then imagine that the plaintiffs are fundamentalist Christians opposing a restrictive law rather than Jews.  Same result:  protecting the rights of religiously oriented businesses in the face of discriminatory public laws.  Other precedents apply the same logic to protect employees as well as owners and managers.

(Let me also clarify my position on one point:  Professor McDonnell says that I advocate employees as having a right to determine "what religious goals, if any, the corporation is exercising."  This is actually not my argument.  Employees' role in governance is a separate issue, and in my view there is room for many different types of business enterprises structures.  Again see my new book on Business Persons, chapter 5.  My point here is that employees should count as relevant members of firms when the question involves religious free exercise.  There is good reason to think that owners and managers may call the shots in terms of business decisions about a firm's operations, marketing, quality control, customer services, etc.  But for a business to make determinations that affect employees' religious or strongly held moral beliefs on questions of compliance with a federal law is a different matter.  In my view, even if employees are not part of the active management and governance of a firm, there is an argument that their religious views matter just as much as those of their managers.  I make the same argument, by the way, with respect to the political activities of business in the context of Citizens United.  Justice Stevens errs in his dissent there, in my view, by focusing only on potentially divergent views among the shareholders of a firm (which is indeed relevant).  He misses that fact that employees have differing political opinions too.  See id., chapter 7.

Alan Meese in this symposium cheerfully adopts of the label of being on "the right."  But I resist a similar characterization.  Perhaps I'm simply contrarian:  I remember that I would sometimes sit with friends at Oberlin in my undergraduate days long ago, and we would consider that we were in the "far center" rather than on the traditional "left" or "right."  I realize that some may reply "Oh, Oberlin:  yes, he's definitely Left."  Or some might say:  "Far Center is very close to Out in Left Field!" 

But seriously:  Perhaps law and business professors can play a role in calling a truce to the Kulturkampf which surely possesses the media-driven world today.  The decisions in Hobby Lobby, I think, suggest an opportunity for some reflection along non-partisan lines.

One reflection is to suggest that perhaps Hobby Lobby didn't really need to be decided.  It seems that a compromise might have been offered by the Obama Administration to carve out from coverage of the health care law a number of closely held for-profit corporations along the same lines that they agreed to carve out religious non-profits.  It may have been wise politically too:  a fifteen-employee limit might have been negotiated then more easily than it will be to cabin the scope of Hobby Lobby's holding now.  Perhaps I'm too cynical, but in view of the political reactions to Hobby Lobby on both sides, one wonders whether the case wasn't litigated (or allowed to go forward) with political purposes in mind.  Win or lose:  both sides energize their bases!  As one of my political scientist neighbors at Penn remarked, perhaps the biggest economic winners in Citizens United, McCutcheon, and Hobby Lobby have been political lobbyists and fundraisers. 

But for law and business professors -- and other observers -- the Hobby Lobby case presents an opportunity for deeper intellectual engagement.  As previously discussed, we have "conservative" Justice Alito writing about religious values in business corporations that he recognizes extend also to questions of environmental sustainability and benefit corporations.  He casts doubt on the deservedly fading mantra of shareholder value maximization.   And we have "liberal" Justice Ginsburg describing the relevant stakes of employees as "interests" rather than "rights."  One almost gets the sense that contraception is an economic decision, in her view, as much as a moral one.  In other words, Hobby Lobby is normatively complex:  and the reason, in my view, is that the issues here run deep into our received but insufficiently examined theories of business:  what is business and what is business for?  And how should we fashion laws in light of our collective answers to these questions?  Answering these questions, I hope, will reveal a long-term silver lining in the opinions of Hobby Lobby that may transcend our current Kulturkampf.

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