The employer does not "earmark" any benefits as being for contraception. (Indeed, not even the plan does so.) Nor does the employer purchase contraception.
An employer that does not offer a health care plan will pay its employees more in wages. (It's all a form of compensation for labor.) Those employees will inevitably use those extra wages for health care, including contraception. An employer may choose, however, to replace some of those wages with a health insurance plan -- a substitute form of compensation. Of course, an employee who receives this alternative form of compensation cannot use it for anything under the sun -- not baseball tickets, not hamburgers. But she can purchase tens or hundreds of thousands of different medical services, of which contraception is a small subset. And she'll be reimbursed for those medical services by the plan, whichever she happens to use. *The employee *decides what to "earmark," just as she does with wages -- she simply has a somewhat less unlimited, yet still vast, set of choices. On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Douglas Laycock <dlayc...@virginia.edu>wrote: > The line is between benefits that are earmarked for a particular item and > wages that are not. It is between what the employer purchases himself, and > what the employee purchases. > > First you wildly exaggerate their claim, then you say that the exaggerated > claim is ridiculous, then you infer that the actual claim is also > ridiculous. > > Which is not to say that some of the people on the religious fringes, both > left and right, don't make wildly exaggerated claims. But no religious > claimant has ever won on a claim about the use of money paid over without > restriction to someone else. The only claim of that sort I can think of is > claims about paying taxes that the government then spends for immoral > purposes. Zero for however many times they have tried. > > On Tue, 11 Mar 2014 22:17:40 -0400 > Steven Jamar <stevenja...@gmail.com> wrote: > >Still complicit--the employer knows the wages will sometimes be spent on > things the employer dislikes just as much as the employer knows some > employees will use insurance for things the employer dislikes. If the > theory is complicity, that line is a pretty lame one. > > > >Sent from Steve's iPhone > > > > > >> On Mar 11, 2014, at 9:26 PM, "Brad Pardee" <bp51...@windstream.net> > wrote: > >> > >> Because the employee's paycheck is a blank check. The employee can do > whatever they want with it because, as part of the salary, there are no > limits on what the employee can or can't spend the money on. However, > insurance is not a blank check. The policy specifies what it is covering > and what it is not covering and the employer, in determining the range of > the benefits they offer, is fully involved in the decision of what is being > covered and is fully accountable to his or her God for that decision. > >> > >> Brad > >> > >> From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto: > religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Hillel Y. Levin > >> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 7:36 PM > >> To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics > >> Subject: Re: letter opposing Mississippi RFRA > >> > >> I have a question for those who have religious beliefs opposed to the > contraception mandate. I do not mean this question as a provocation, but > rather in the interest of helping me to understand the problem. Suppose a > religious employer knows with 100% certainty that an employee will spend a > small amount of her income on contraception. I take it that this does not > violate a religious belief. How is that different from directing a > percentage of the employee's salary towards health insurance, which will > cover contraception? > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu > >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see > http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > >> > >> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as > private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are > posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or > wrongly) forward the messages to others. > > Douglas Laycock > Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law > University of Virginia Law School > 580 Massie Road > Charlottesville, VA 22903 > 434-243-8546 > _______________________________________________ > To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see > http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > > Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as > private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are > posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or > wrongly) forward the messages to others. >
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
