View From The Other Side…

When the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision was announced there were all kinds of theories of what it will mean to the LGBT community. Some people are saying that the ruling will lead to companies’ claiming that it is against their religious beliefs to hire LGBT people and while others claiming that the ruling only applies to healthcare.

There have been a number of colleges that claimed religious exemptions from hiring LGBT employees or enrolling LGBT students. One of the notable colleges to claim religious exemption was Gordon College in Salem Massachusetts.

Now that President Obama has signed the Executive Order banning discrimination against LGBT employees for federal with the narrow religious exemptions there are those who are citing the Supreme Court decision to claim religious exemptions. In the OneNewsNow artilce “'Imperialist president' at it again, says attorney” they quote Matt Barber who is the vice president of Liberty Counsel Action,

"Here we have this president acting and ruling as the imperialist president – circumventing Congress, circumventing the separation of powers in order to force his radical, leftist agenda on the rest of America – and targeting and discriminating specifically against Christian companies in order to do so," he tells OneNewsNow.

Barber  argues the president isn't heeding the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision last month that permits business owners of faith to operate their business on the basis of the their faith. He says with this latest executive order, the president is doing exactly what the ruling forbids.

Now here is a lawyer who seems to be someone with “national standing” saying that the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision applies to employment discrimination. I am not a lawyer, but this seems quite clear,

The principal dissent raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. See post, at 32–33. Our decision today provides no such shield. The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the work-force without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.

The majority opinion justices pointed out that the Hobby Lobby decision does not apply to employment discrimination a point the conservative lawyers seem to have overlooked.