For folks having trouble with Eugene's hypothetical, think about an activity
that most secularists would also think is seriously wrong. Suppose I form a
wholly owned corporation, and my corporation uses slave labor for hazardous
work, with many deaths and injuries among the workers, in some
Actually, in order to make the hypothetical analogous to these cases . . .
well, it really can't be made analogous, because providing a health
insurance plan that covers all recognized medical treatments without
exception can't be analogized to choosing to use slave labor in any serious
moral
The distinctions offered in the first two paragraphs below
might well represent a sensible moral judgment. But I don't see how it can
affect the RFRA substantial burden analysis, if the owners sincerely consider
that they are responsible to God for using slave labor, or paying
Prof. Stephen Bainbridge, who teaches corporate law at UCLA, published a
short article on reverse veil piercing (i.e., piercing by the
corporation's owners) in the current issue of The Green Bag that gives some
additional context to this discussion. It can be found here:
I think that there are at least two things going on here that have not been
well articulated:
(1) Corporate lawyers have spent decades attempting to convince courts and
legislatures that the corporate entity should be seen as a separate person
from its shareholders, even when the corporation
