At its conceptual core, that’s what this case is about: whether religious business owners and employees should be able to refuse to provide contraceptives to women, even when state regulations require them to do so. Legally speaking, though, the case also tees up a number of complicated questions that could have potentially informed future lower-court cases on religious freedom, had the Supreme Court taken it on. The most important issue is this: In the case of a law or regulation like Washington’s, does the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment require the government to make exceptions for religious objectors?
The reason why that question is relevant in this case has to do with Washington’s state laws and the way the case was litigated. In comparing Stormans with Hobby Lobby, said James Oleske, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College, “once you look at the actual legal claims being brought in the case, they differ in important ways,” he said. “The Hobby Lobby case was brought under RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides a right to religious exemptions.”
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