Letter: Hobby Lobby has a religious right

Re: “Hobby Lobby runs an unfair business,” Mailbag, July 2. The letter writer, Mr. Aboulsaad, appears to want to punish Hobby Lobby for exercising its rights under federal and state laws. To claim that its owners are greedy for incorporating and then addressing a conflict of federal law (the Affordable Care Act versus the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act) is at best disingenuous.

The court ruling only addressed “closely held corporations” wherein the stock is held by very few people and not publicly traded. Thus, the Hobby Lobby decision does not apply to major corporations.

The beliefs of the owners of Hobby Lobby were such that they felt that only a very few types of birth control they were mandated to provide (i.e.: pay for) under the ACA, were not consistent with their religious beliefs, and that there was a conflict between the two laws above.

Mr. Aboulsaad and others, write as if this is a denial of all birth control to all women, and that corporations can just willy-nilly decide what they will provide and to whom. The decision makes it clear this is not the case.

No one is being denied access to any form of birth control under this decision. It’s only a matter of the federal government forcing someone to pay for or do something that goes against a set of religious beliefs. And by the way, I would wager heavily on the fact that all of the hobby stores Mr. Aboulsaad references at the end of his letter are in fact small, closely held corporations of the same or similar corporate form as the Hobby Lobby. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Caesar J. Milch
Burbank