Yesterday the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (13-354)), a case which will have a profound impact on the role of religion and morality in public life in this country.  A few background facts: Hobby Lobby is a corporation with 13,000 employees and about 700 stores selliing arts and crafts supplies.  It is owned and run by a family which tries to operate the business in accordance with traditional Christian values so, for example, the stores are all closed on Sundays.

Hobby Lobby objects to the portion of the so-called "contraceptive mandate" in the Affordable Care Act which requires employers to provide coverage for IUD's and "morning after" pills on the grounds that such drugs and devices essentially induce abortions.  The penalty which the government would impose on Hobby Lobby for refusing to provide this particular coverage to its employees is about $475 million per year.

Hobby Lobby sued the government, claiming (among other things) that by forcing it to provide this coverage or pay a $475 million annual fine the government was interfering with Hobby Lobby's rights under the First Amendment, which says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The government responded by saying that corporations can't "exercise" religion and so the protections of the First Amendment are not available to Hobby Lobby.

The following exchange between Justice Sotomayer and Justice Alito frames the issue.  Justice Sotomayer: "How does a corporation exercise religion?"

Justice Alito: "That's a religious question and you want us to provide a definitive secular answer."

So do corporations "exercise religion"? Do they have a conscience, moral values, ethics? Or are they just amoral enterprises whose sole purpose is to maximize profits?

Certainly we expect corporations to act with ethics, morality, a conscience.  We do not want them to be worry solely about profits.  That's why we have some righteous indignation when they do not tell the truth about product defects even though the failure to do so probably maximized profits (see the current controversy about the alleged failure of GM to inform consumers about ignition defects) or when they pollute the environment, even though they maximize profits by cleaning up the occasional mess rather than preventing them in the first place.

Corporations exist not just to make money.  Corporations exist, at least in part,"truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all." (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, no. 203). Corporations exist for the benefit of employees, communities, and the broader public-- as well as shareholders.  Read the mission statement of any public company if you want confirmation of that.

In fact, the government conceded as much in the Hobby Lobby argument.  Justice Alito asked whether it was the government's position that "corporations exist just to maximize profits." Solicitor General Don Verrilli, the government's top appellate lawyer, conceded it was not, even though a lower court that ruled in the government's favor had so indicated.


So if we all agree that corporations are to be moral creatures, motivated by values beyond profit-maximization, where do those values come from?  Who sets the "true north" on the moral compass?

The owners of Hobby Lobby would say that the moral compass is set by the owners of the business and determined by their moral values. Those values are established, or at least informed by, their religious beliefs.  Like all great religions of the world, the Judeo-Christian tradition has much to say about business values.  Today in Morning Prayer we prayed from Isaiah 33:16-16 that God upholds:

         He who practices virtue and speaks honestly,
         who spurns what is gained by oppression,
          brushing his hands free of contact with a bribe,
          stopping his ears lest he hear of bloodshed,
          closing his eyes lest he look on evil."

The values we expect corporations to uphold have their derivations fundamentally in religious tradition.  And there is no reason why they cannot uphold those values in their public activities with the protection of the First Amendment.

Justice Alito made the point by asking Solicitor General Verrilli whether "there is something wrong with the corporate form that disqualifies it from religious rights." Of course, the answer is no.

But if the answer is yes-- if corporations cannot draw on faith traditions for their moral compass-- and if we expect them to be just, upright and ethical-- where will the values come from that will inform corporate choices?  Unfortunately, the answer the Affordable Care Act provides is the government.

Even a dependable liberal like Justice Breyer was disturbed by the idea that the kinds of judgments implicit in the Affordable Care Act, such as whether drugs and devices that may well induce abortions should be mandatorily-included, are being made not by Congress but by nameless and unelected government agency employees. But if you take away religious values, that's where you're left.

As always seems to be the case on matters of this sort, expect a 5-4 decision.  I predict that 5 of the 6 Catholic justices will make the majority (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy).

I hope Justice Kennedy's views can be gleaned from this final dialogue he had with the Solicitor General:

   "Under your view, for-profit corporations can be forced to pay for abortion. Your reasoning would permit that... You say that for-profit corporations have no standing to litigate what their shareholders believe."

It truly will be a sad day if  government bureaucrats are the only ones who can inform corporate moral decisionmaking. Hopefully Justice Kennedy thinks so too.