You Surrender Your First Amendment Rights

DOJ Says If You Choose to Start a Business, You Surrender Your First Amendment Rights

Hobby Lobby sued the government over the health care mandates in Obamacare.

The Department of Justice responded to that lawsuit by saying business people surrender their religious rights when the enter the marketplace:


Plaintiffs’ challenge rests largely on the theory that a for-profit, secular corporation established to sell art and craft supplies can claim to exercise religion and thereby avoid the reach of laws designed to regulate commercial activity. This cannot be.

Nor can the owners of a for-profit, secular corporation eliminate the legal separation provided by the corporate form, which the owners have chosen because it benefits them, to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity’s employees. To hold otherwise would permit for-profit, secular corporations and their owners to become laws unto themselves. Because there are an infinite variety of alleged religious beliefs, such companies and their owners could claim countless exemptions from an untold number of general commercial laws designed to protect against unfair discrimination in the workplace and to protect the health and well-being of individual employees and their families. Such a system would not only be unworkable, it would also cripple the government’s ability to solve national problems through laws of general application.

Did you note that last bit?

If people retained their rights, how could the government solve all the problems?

That’s a huge look behind the curtain at the great and powerful Oz, isn’t it?

If we let you keep all these rights, how can we ever force you to do what we feel in necessary to control everything?

So who keeps these rights?

Business owners don’t.

Employees can’t.

Unemployed government dependents?

If the government decides you need to surrender your right to free speech in order for it to “solve national problems,” would you?

Then why should any business owner surrender their religious rights?