RFRA Protects Hobby Lobby

Bethany Garland

Sotomayor

Kagan

Ginsburg

Breyer

Kennedy

Roberts

Scalia

Thomas

Alito

In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, it was ruled that the craft store chain Hobby Lobby does not have to cover the cost of contraceptives under Obamacare for it's employees. Now, Obamacare has a mandate that says employers have to pay for the insurance to cover the cost of contraceptives for women, so what makes Hobby Lobby different? The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993."The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom."(www.nytimes.com)  Luis Granados authored an article, The Real Hobby Lobby Problem, detailing his views on why RFRA needs to be repealed. Granados did an exceptional job using ethos, pathos, and logos to spell out why RFRA doesn't work for this country and why we as a nation would be better off without it.

Luis Granados didn't go over the top with his emotional stand point, which speaks volumes to his character. Since he uses more logos and ethos to get his point across it was appropriate to not go overboard with pathos. He did show his passion for the topic using humor through out the article stating, " And the law as it stands includes my nominee for the single worst statute on the books today, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993." (Granados, Luis) He was able to show his distaste for RFRA and later in the article showed how he felt about the politicians who passed this bill. "Democrats, the as now, envied the power of the religious right, and then as now deluded themselves into thinking they could win over a fair share of evangelical voters by sucking up to organized religion." (Granados, Luis) Using his humor but not going over the top he was able to grab his audiences attention and allow them to think about his point-of-view even if they didn't agree with it.

Along with using his humor to grab the reader's attention, Granados establishes trust with his use of facts, and the reasoning behind them. Logos and ethos go hand-in-hand in this article. Since this work is such an opinionated piece, it is very important for the author to use both to keep the audience until the very end. In the article, Granados explains his reasoning for why he feels like the RFRA doesn't belong in this country, but he doesn't stop there. He goes after not only the 'religious right' but also the Democratic politicians. He claims their motives for passing the law were to grab more votes from the 'right side'. He also blames the writers of Obamacare for their carelessness when allowing a third of the population to be exempt from so-called mandates because of religious views. Then at the end he uses common sense and a little humor to wrap it all up saying, "Have one government with one set of laws that applies equally to everybody, regardless of what they do or don't believe about the supernatural." (Granados, Luis) What he does so ingeniously is make the audience as a whole, no matter what their beliefs are, stop and really think about the law and whether we do really need this protection.

Works Cited

Granados, Luis. "The Real Hobby Lobby Problem." Humanist 74.3 (2014): 6. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Liptak, Adam. "Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations." The New York Times 30 June 2014. The New York Times Company. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-supreme-court-contraception.html?_r=0>.