The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has issued a decision blocking enforcement of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Court Considers Religion, 'Corporate Personhood'
What makes this particular decision especially interesting is that they used the Citizens United decision of SCOTUS as a legal basis of their findings. They reasoned that since corporations have been found to be persons holding political rights under the terms of the first amendment they must also be considered to be holding religious rights as well. Thus requiring a corporation to provide contraceptive coverage is a violation of the corporate religious sensibilities. Ultimately we will see if the SCOTUS majority that brought us Citizens United are willing to extend their judicial reasoning yet another step too far.
It seems to me that this decision raises major theological challenges for the right wing religious establishment. If corporations are to be viewed as religious persons it would logically be necessary to address their [GASP] morality. One issue that quickly comes to mind is what has traditionally been termed corporate mergers. Surely if these are persons they ought to be married in church with all the trimmings and not living in sin as they do now.
Of course the issue of corporate marriage will make it necessary to address the matter of corporate gender. They certainly can't allow same sex corporations to enter into the estate of holy matrimony. Now just how are they going to tell the difference. I suppose that a marriage between a cosmetics company and a gun company would be ok, but what about two banks? I mean this is serious business!
They will of course need to find a way to baptize corporations so that they can be truly Christians. Can that be accomplished by sprinkling the articles of incorporation? Should the board of directors he held under water for some specified period of time? Now that has definite possibilities.
One thing I think is a safe prediction. It seems very unlikely that the theologians of the right will find it necessary to spend time worrying about moral standards of corporate behavior. They seem to be comfortably established in the notion that God likes greed and rewards those who excel at it.