Corporate Christians

There’s a reason for-profit corporations are called for-profit. They exist to make a profit — not to practice a religion or vote or exercise many of the hundreds of other rights and privileges reserved for actual people.

Corporations are not people.

They are entities owned by an individual or a group of individuals. But their existence is and should be secondary to the existence of actual people and actual citizens of the United States.

A case currently before the Supreme Court of the United States seeks to expand the application of religious freedom to for-profit corporations. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood are both for-profit corporations owned by religious individuals.

These individuals oppose certain contraceptive measures they view as abortifacients and believe their corporations are extensions of themselves. But those corporations are not covered by any of the exemptions to the requirement that employer-provided health insurance plans pay for these contraceptives.

They are asking the Supreme Court to grant them an exemption under a 1993 law that places restrictions on when a law can “substantially burden” the practice of religion by a “person.”

It’s that last word that is in contention. Is Hobby Lobby a person? It is clear to the Editorial Board that the answer must be no.

The Dictionary Act, which provides the meaning for certain words as used by Congress in legislations, defines a “person” as inclusive of corporations and other associations. As is often the case, Congress got it wrong.

To appeal to a religious argument, it should be immediately clear that these corporations were not “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the same rights that the right to religious freedom stems from.

Even if corporations are people, they do not have to be perfect extensions of the beliefs of a small set of individuals we might call owners. There are 13,000 other employees of Hobby Lobby whose livelihood and industry are fundamental to any corporeal nature we might seek to find in the company.

If corporations are people, they are people explicitly owned by other people. That statement is absurd — not least in that it might seem to conflict with the 13th Amendment — and its absurdity should serve as another indicator for just how ridiculous this conversation is.

Corporations are not people. They do not vote. They do not bleed in our wars. They are entities of collaboration among and between individuals. They are systems of organization, and they should be given particular privileges that allow them to function, but they should not be enfranchised in the same way real, live Americans with beating hearts are.

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