SCOTUS Decision Day on Hobby Lobby Challenging ObamaCare’s Contraception Mandate … Major Decision Just Hours Away (Update: Hobby Lobby Wins 5-4 Over Obamacare)

1st Amendment and Freedom of Religion at stake this morning at the SCOTUS …

It is decision day for The Supreme Court of the United States on the issue before them of Holly Lobby challenging the Obamacare contraception mandate. Holly Lobby, the for-profit businesses is challenging the requirement in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that employers cover contraception for women at no extra charge among a range of preventive benefits in employee health plans. As the National Journal reports, SCOTUS  won’t strike down Obamacare’s contraception mandate completely because that is not what the two companies, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, have asked of the Court. They haven’t asked the justices to ax the entire policy; however, a ruling for the law’s challengers could still render the policy toothless for millions of women.

VIDEO – FOX News – click on pic to watch video

FOX News:

The court meets for a final time Monday to release decisions in its two remaining cases before the justices take off for the summer.

The most contentious is that brought by Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby and a furniture maker in Pennsylvania. The for-profit businesses have challenged the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that employers cover contraception for women at no extra charge among a range of preventive benefits in employee health plans. It is the first major challenge to ObamaCare to come before the court since the justices upheld the law’s individual requirement to buy health insurance two years ago.

Supporters of Hobby Lobby cite a few factors potentially leaning in their favor, including the tone of oral arguments in March and a unanimous decision last week finding President Obama overreached in making recess appointments to a labor board.

“Absolutely, we win — we are very confident after oral argument in March that we will prevail in this case,” Hannah Smith, senior counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby, told Fox News. She suggested this, too, is a case of government “overreach.”

CNN – Jonathan Turley, Professor of Law at George Washington University discusses the ramification of today’s SCOTUS decision.

CNN VIDEO

I predict 6-3 in favor of Hobby Lobby. Then again, this SCOTUS has disappointed me before.

UPDATE I: Hobby Lobby wins SCOTUS decision 5-4 over Obamacare.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the major opinion and said, it was difficult to distinguish between closely held corporations and the people who own them. The religious liberty law was not intended to discriminate “against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that owners of private companies can object on religious grounds to a provision of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law that requires employers to provide insurance covering birth control for women.

The decision, which applies only to a small number of family or other closely-held companies, means an estimated several thousand women whose health insurance comes via such companies may have to obtain certain forms of birth control coverage elsewhere.

In a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the justices said the companies can seek an exemption from the so-called birth control mandate of the law known as Obamacare. The companies in the case said they did not object to all birth control but certain methods they said were tantamount to abortion, which they oppose for religious reasons.

In their last decision of the nine-month term, the justices ruled for the first time that for-profit companies can make claims under a 1993 federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was enacted to protect religious liberty.

Democrats go mental over the decision and threaten to respond to SCOTUS decision. But wait, isn’t it now law of the land? Isn’t that what Democrats, including Obama, say when the GOP tries to end Obamacare?