Analysis: I Can T, It's Against My Religion

Introduction
The term “I can’t, it’s against my religion” has been the argument that many teenagers use to get out of doing what they do not want to do, whether it is homework, cleaning up their room or babysitting their siblings. It could be said that these teenagers are invoking their First Amendment Rights of religious freedom. But what if a corporation, say, New Age Transportation, a family owned company, allowed their drivers to smoke marijuana as part of their daily religious practice? Do the beliefs of the corporation align with the democratic values of this country, specifically of liberty, justice, equality and the common good? This paper aims to explore the meaning of “corporate personality”, “religious freedom” and their consistency

with these basic democratic values.
What Is Corporate Personality?
The concept of corporate personality is as old as the Old Testament.

It is the idea that there is a relationship between individuals and the groups they belong to. The term corporation comes from a Latin derivative of corpus meaning body, or “body of people” Before deregulation, there were few corporations and they came together for a particular project, like building a park, and it was disbanded after the project was finished. Originally the idea of corporate personality encompasses the concept that the individuals of a group are not separate from the group; that by extension, other group members are encompassed by the actions of each other; and that there is a very real relationship between the group and the individuals of that group (Sang-Won, 2001). In other words, you are known by the “company” you keep.
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, defines corporate personality as “The distinct status of a business organization that has complied with law for its recognition a legal entity and that has an independent legal existence from that of its officers, directors, and shareholders” (2008). According to this definition, the corporation has the ability to sue and be sued, buy, sell and lease property in its own name but that it is separate from is officers and shareholders. However, we find that this is not necessarily true, as in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores,

Inc.
“Corporate Personhood” came into question in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The new law mandated that employers needed to provide health care for their employees that included all forms of contraception at no cost (Fuller, 2014). Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation that is primarily owned by the Green family. The Green family objected to being forced to supply particular birth control, such as the morning after pill, on religious grounds, as they felt that certain forms of “birth control” are in fact, ending a human life. Other non-profit corporations have been excluded from similar mandates, such as churches or charities.
This brings the question as to whether or not a for-profit company has the right to exercise “its” religious freedom under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, RFRA, since it is a company, not a person…or is it.

According to the law, a company is separate from its owners or shareholders. According to the Old Testament, they are not. In the case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Obama Administration contends that for-profit corporations are not “persons” under RFRA (Meese & Oman, 2014) and should not be exempt from the ACA. The Supreme Court decision, however, determined that because it was a “closely held” company, it shared the owners’ rights to religious freedom, ergo, the company, Hobby Lobby, is

Christian.
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
According to the Constitution of America, each person has the right to religious freedom, that is, the freedom to believe, worship and observe, in public or private, the religion of his choosing. The idea was that the leadership of the United States could not mandate what religion its citizens followed. This freedom was so important to our newly established country, that it was included in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Two hundred years later, after a Civil War, The Civil Rights Movement, and numerous other conflicts over discrimination, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is passed in 1993. This act was passed to clarify some protections for religious freedom in the United States. RFRA was the result of a U.S. Supreme Court case, Employment Division v. Smith, where two men were fired for negligence after using drugs for religious worship and then were denied unemployment benefits. The case began as a lawsuit about being fired for negligence, but then became a case for religious freedom causing the negligence (Krctovich, 2016).
After some controversy as to whether the government can restrict how one practices their religion, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that mandated that a “compelling interest test”, meaning it prohibits the government to restrict your practice unless it can show a compelling state interest for that restriction, such as national safety. If a restriction is allowed, it must be the least prohibitive way of achieving the compelling interest. It also allows individuals to sue the government if they believe their religious rights were violated by the government (Krctovich, 2016). In the case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that it did not have to provide certain contraceptive coverage to their employees, an exemption from the ACA, due to religious beliefs of the primary share holders, the Green family.
RFRA does not apply to state law but many states have adopted their own RFRA laws. Unfortunately, some of these state laws are being used to justify refusing service to certain peoples on the basis of their sexual orientation, as witnessed in the case of the bakery in Colorado refusing to bake a cake for a gay couples’ wedding.
Alignment with Core Democratic Values
When a company, as a separate entity or a person, if you will, exercises its right to religious freedom, denies service or provision to its customers or employees, is it in alignment with core democratic values? What democratic values are in question?
Liberty
Liberty, as defined by Paul Green in his on-line commentary, is autonomy; immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority; political independence, freedom of choice and personal freedom from…oppression (2008). The Michigan Department of Education says the right to liberty is an unalterable aspect of the human condition (2016). The freedom of religion, and subsequently, the RFRA are enacted to protect the individual from imposing on the citizens’ rights to believe and practice their religion as they choose. At the onset, it appears that RFRA supports the ideal of liberty; freedom to believe as one will in the religion of their choice. The issue seems to be when a corporation is considered a “person’ and therefore can practice its religion freely, even if that means imposing on an individual’s liberty. Liberty encompasses not only the right to believe as one will, but the right to express your opinions, the right to meet in groups and the right to have any lawful job or business (Michigan DOE, 2016). If a business can refuse service to a couple based on the religious beliefs of that “corporate personhood”, that can be considered discrimination under the law. The law, none the less, supports the democratic value of liberty, in this case, from the perspective of the corporation’s vantage, but the flip side of that coin lands squarely at the door of discrimination. Discrimination is not consistent with the democratic value of equality.

Justice and Equality
Equality has been a debated democratic value almost from the time of inception. Equality means that everyone, no matter what color, creed, race, sex or sexual orientation, should get the same treatment and that everyone has political, social and economic equality (Michigan DOE, 2016). Justice follows equality in that all people should be treated fairly. Sadly, when the Constitution was written with the ideals of justice and liberty included in the Preamble, disparity among “We the people” existed and still exists to this day.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, it granted citizenship to former slaves and limited state power including, not depriving, any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law and guaranteed all persons equal protection of the laws. Although the amendment was fundamentally intended for the recently freed slaves, it specifically stated all persons. Some people, especially in the southern states, tried to hold on to the idea that not all people were created equal, and could cite scripture to support their “religious” beliefs. Many references to slavery are recorded in the Old Testament including Leviticus 25:44-46 where it offers guidance for the buying of slaves and Colossians 4:1where it states how masters are to treat their slaves.
Although corporations are never mentioned in the Constitution, corporate personhood has been part of American law for quite some time. The 14th Amendment was used more often to support the rights of the corporate “person” in court than newly freed African Americans. According to Mary Zepernick, an activist for Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, from 1890 to 1910, three hundred and seven cases were brought before the court against the U.S.. Two hundred and eighty-eight were by corporation and only 19 by African Americans! Corporate Personality had firmly found its place in the annals of law.
Religion has been used and twisted throughout the ages to support the agenda of anyone in power. Corporations have been given a great deal of power by law and now the rights of a natural person by law to practice a religion and yet not be held accountable for moral issues such as discrimination. It was Edward Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain during the late 1700’s that said “Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like” (Poynder, 1844). When the rights of a corporation are favored over the rights of a natural person, this is not justice and this is not equality. Justice is no longer about what the moral intent of the law is, but how semantics can be used by corporate attorneys to twist a law to serve the ever increasing power of the corporation as an entity separate from moral ideals.
The democratic values of equality and justice are lofty ideals and the idea of corporations being equal to and getting the same treatment as a natural person is absurd. Emphasis is not on equality, but once again, on power, which by its very nature is anything but equal or just.
The Common Good
Finally, to examine if the existence of corporate personality and religious freedom are consistent with “the common good”, one must define what “the common good” is. In the summary of core democratic values, the Michigan Department of Education states that the common good requires a commitment from individual citizens to work together to promote the welfare of the community and the greater benefit of all (2016). The common good benefits all of society, and not just the private or privileged good of some. This is a democratic value that has been integral in the political philosophy of the United States since before the Constitution was penned.
The idea of the common good has been discussed and debated since the time of Aristotle. According to Simon Lee in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the common good can only be achieved through citizenship, collective action and active participation in politics and public service (2016). Lee goes on to say that in the modern era, the emphasis has turned to politically defined common goods and the corporate good of a [particular] social group (2016).
If the common good is the result of action “by the people, for the people”, then in the case of corporate personality and religious freedom, it is not consistent with this core democratic value. A corporation is a powerful entity; a “person” now defined by law. A corporation is not “the people” as intended by the Constitution. The corporation is “some people” that have incorporated and become “a person”, not necessarily separate from the people that comprise it, as in the case of a closely held corporation like Hobby Lobby, Inc. Now that this “person” can have a religious belief system that, by law, can refuse service to certain peoples or not have to abide by the ACA, corporate personality with religious freedom no longer qualifies as consistent with the definition of “common good” or good for everyone. Whereas the freedom to believe and practice a religion is guaranteed to everyone in this country, the lines get blurred when the individual’s or corporate practice infringes on the rights, freedoms or equality of another. When the powerful few, get to manipulate the intention of the law to suit their ideals, whether moral or financial, this is not consistent with the democratic value of the common good.
Conclusion
Core democratic values have been defined as the fundamental beliefs and constitutional principles of American society, which unite all Americans (Michigan DOE, 2016). Our Founding Fathers wrote these values into the Constitution as an ideal guide, and an edict to the King of England, to break away from the tyranny of a powerful and controlling monarchy and to establish a government by the people and for the people. Reiterated in the Pledge of Allegiance, are the terms “liberty”, “justice” and “for all” to remind the faithful citizens of the United States of the value that is placed on these concepts. Yet, again, the powerful few have bent those ideals and these values to suit their purpose and greed. Unfortunately, what was intended to support life, liberty and the promotion of the general welfare for all people has become a twisted game of semantics for corporate lawyers and the corporations that support them. Corporate personality and religious freedom is more consistent with the behaviors of an oligarchy, not the values of Democracy.