Category Archives: alternative energy

Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

by CarynX74xvmpk Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, the long lines of Arizona primary voters highlighted the potentially disastrous fallout from a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The specter of a new disenfranchisement controversy was all too familiar for a group of people who have been fighting for their right to vote in Arizona and much of the West for years: Native Americans. “What’s happening in Indian Country is reflective of what’s happening nationwide,” says Daniel McCool, political science professor at the University of Utah and coauthor of the book Native Vote.

Earlier this month, Indian Country Media Network reported that Native American and Alaska Natives have flagged voting-related problems in 17 states, via litigation or tribal diplomacy with local officials. For example, in Alaska—which will hold its Democratic caucuses Saturday—Alaska Natives scored a victory in September 2014, when a federal judge concluded that state election officials violated the Voting Rights Act when they failed to translate voting materials for Alaska Natives in rural sections of the state. After nine months of talks, they reached a settlement to get election pamphlets translated into six dialects of Yup’ik and Gwich’in through 2020, granting them language assistance ahead of the caucuses this weekend.

9 Facts that Blow Up the Voter-Fraud Myth

Meanwhile, congressional efforts to protect voting rights for Native Americans and Alaska Natives have come to a halt. Last July, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced a bill that would prevent states from moving polling places to inconvenient locations, banishing in-person voting on reservations, and altering early voting locations. The bill, inspired by a voting access case in Montana that compelled three counties to open satellite offices on reservations, has stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are a few other cases to keep in mind:

Poor Bear v. Jackson County: In September 2014, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation filed a lawsuit against Jackson County, South Dakota, alleging that county officials refused to create a satellite office where Sioux residents could register and file in-person absentee ballots. For tribal citizens, the closest place to submit their absentee ballots is the county auditor’s office in Kadoka, a town that’s 95 percent white and roughly 27 miles away. (Native Americans must travel twice as far as white residents in the county to submit ballots in person, according to the lawsuit.) Voters can also submit absentee ballots by mail, but they have to submit an affidavit to prove their identity if they lack a tribal photo ID card, a potential hardship for Native American voters.

The county commission declined to approve the office because “it believed funding was not available,” despite a Help America Vote Act plan that allowed the county to use state funds to create the office. After residents filed for a preliminary injunction, the commission agreed to open a temporary satellite voting office in the runup to Election Day 2014. Last November, in an agreement with South Dakota’s secretary of state, the Jackson County Commission approved a satellite site through 2023.

Brakebill v. Jaeger: In January, seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians filed a lawsuit against North Dakota state secretary Alvin Jaeger, alleging that the strict requirements under the state’s voter ID law imposed a discriminatory burden on Native Americans. When the state enacted House Bill 1332 in April 2015, it limited the forms of permissible identification at voting booths, required forms of identification to display the voter’s home address and date of birth, and eliminated a provision that allowed voters to use a voucher or affidavit if they failed to bring an ID. The lawsuit alleges that the bill “disenfranchised and imposed significant barriers for qualified Native American voters by establishing strict voter ID and residence requirements.”

According to the lawsuit, Native Americans in North Dakota have to travel an average of nearly 30 miles to obtain a driver’s license. The lawsuit also claims that many Native Americans lack tribal government IDs with residential addresses, which is an alternative form of ID under state law. In February, Jaeger tried to get the case tossed out, arguing that the voter ID law was constitutional. The judge has yet to decide.

Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission v. San Juan County: Less than two years ago, prospective Navajo Nation voters in San Juan County, Utah—where Native Americans are nearly 47 percent of the population—had to travel an average of two hours to submit a ballot in the predominantly white city of Monticello, without access to reliable public transportation. That’s because in 2014, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others in late February, the county closed polling places and switched over to mail-in ballots, placing a “disproportionately severe burden” on Navajo residents. The county has yet to respond in court to the case.

It wasn’t the first time San Juan County has been sued for violating the Voting Rights Act. In fact, the Navajo Nation claimed in a previous lawsuit that the county commission “relied on race” when it decided not to change the boundary lines for a largely Native American district in 2011, three decades after they were initially drawn. In February, US District Judge Robert Shelby ordered the county to redraw its election district lines after he ruled that its current boundaries, which were set after a settlement with the Justice Department in the 1980s, were unconstitutional.

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Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

by HarleyShapcott Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Just for the record, here’s what Hillary Clinton was doing today in the wake of the Brussels bombings: talking about combating terrorism at a roundtable in Los Angeles.

And here’s what our Republican presidential hopefuls were doing: in between panicked demands for surveilling Muslim neighborhoods that even the NYPD rolled its collective eyes at, Donald Trump was lobbing juvenile insults at Ted Cruz’s wife and Cruz was calling Trump a “sniveling coward.”

Remind me again: which party is it that takes national security seriously?

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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

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Hansel and Gretel Finally Get the Stopping Power They’ve Always Deserved

by JuniorSmithies Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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It appears that Hansel and Gretel have been updated for the 21st century:

“Let’s go a little deeper into the forest,” Hansel said….Before long, they heard a rustling in the leaves, and slowly turned to see a magnificent 10-point buck drinking from a stream. Gretel readied her rifle and fired. Her training had paid off, for she was able to bring the buck down instantly with a single shot. She and Hansel quickly field-dressed the deer and packed up to head back home, hardly believing their luck.

Wait. Wasn’t there a witch and a boiling pot and a gingerbread cottage? No worries: that stuff is still there.

”Help us!” the whisper said, as Hansel and Gretel looked to see who it was. “We’re in the gingerbread cottage.”…“We’re going to get you out of here,” Hansel told the boy….The hinges gave a groan and the sound of the witch’s snoring stopped, the silence filling the room as they looked at each other in panic. Gretel got her rifle ready, but lowered it again when the snoring resumed.

….After reuniting the boys with their parents, it was time to take on the witch…and get some hunting done in the meantime. Villagers, prepared with rifles and pistols, headed into the forest, Hansel and Gretel leading the way. When they came upon the witch’s cottage, the sheriff locked her into the cage in which the boys had been locked just the night before, to be taken away so she could never harm another child.

That’s not much of a witch if all it takes is a few villagers with rifles to take her down. Still, at least everyone else lives happily ever after, thanks to our constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.

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Hansel and Gretel Finally Get the Stopping Power They’ve Always Deserved

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

by Maryann3677 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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For more than a decade, the National Football League supported a series of peer-reviewed studies that concluded that brain injuries sustained during football players’ careers did not lead to long-term consequences. But a new investigation by the New York Times reports that the research omitted data from more than 100 documented concussions—and, perhaps more troubling, that the NFL had a closer connection to the tobacco industry than previously known.

While the Times found “no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco,” its story lays out a series of overlapping ties between the league and tobacco giants, from hires to requests for advice. A league attorney challenged the assertion in a letter to the Times that was included in the story, writing, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry.”

But the league didn’t stop there. On Thursday morning, the league released a statement pushing back against the Times report. The newspaper then followed up with a series of tweets refuting the NFL’s statement—after which the league responded with another statement.

Here’s a point-by-point breakdown of what the Times reported and how both sides responded to each other’s claims on Thursday:

Times on NFL’s use of flawed data: “For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies—including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the MTBI studies published by the MTBI Committee are clear that the data set had limitations…The studies never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. Moreover, the fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as documents provided to the Times showed.”

Times‘ responses:

NFL’s follow-up statement: “The studies themselves expressly noted the limitations in their work and never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. The fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as the documents we provided to the Times showed. We nevertheless agree that these limitations could have been more clearly stated.”

Times on Dorothy Mitchell, a former legal liaison who oversaw the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, and her ties to the tobacco industry: “Before joining the N.F.L., Ms. Mitchell, a young Harvard Law School graduate, had been one of five lawyers at Covington & Burling who had provided either lobbying help or legal representation to both the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry, sometimes in the same year.”

NFL’s initial statement: “Her experience as a young lawyer working on a tobacco case (among many other cases) was entirely unknown to the NFL personnel who hired and supervised her, as well as to members of the MTBI Committee, until they learned of this proposed story.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “At her law firm, Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., Dorothy Mitchell worked on a wide variety of matters, including employment matters for the League and a matter for the Tobacco Institute as a young associate. The NFL did not seek out Ms. Mitchell for employment or know that she had worked on any tobacco matter.”

Times on contact between Lorillard general counsel Arthur Stevens and former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in 1992: “In 1992, amid rising concerns about concussions, Mr. Tisch—the Giants and Lorillard part owner—asked the cigarette company’s general counsel, Arthur J. Stevens, to contact the N.F.L. commissioner at the time, Mr. Tagliabue, about certain legal issues…In a letter obtained by The Times, Mr. Stevens referred Mr. Tagliabue to two court cases alleging that the tobacco and asbestos industries had covered up the health risks of their products.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, neither then-NFL Commissioner, Mr. Tagliabue, the League nor its counsel ever solicited, reviewed, or relied on any advice from anyone at Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute regarding health issues.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “Commissioner Tagliabue did not know Mr. Stevens and does not recall communicating with him prior to or after the October 20 letter. There is no evidence in an extensive review of files that Mr. Tagliabue solicited the advice, reviewed the advice or acted upon the advice. Nor did anyone else at the League ever take any action regarding health issues based on advice from Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute.”

Times on the league and tobacco industry sharing lobbyists: “Still, the records show that the two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. Personal correspondence underscored their friendships, including dinner invitations and a request for lobbying advice.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the League has never participated—either through its counsel of over 50 years, Covington & Burling, or otherwise—in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “The NFL has worked with Covington & Burling for more than 50 years, and both the NFL and the Tobacco Institute have retained Covington & Burling at various times for lobbying services—as have any number of other companies and individuals in Washington and elsewhere. But the NFL never participated in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute. Regarding health and safety, the NFL retained assistance from Covington & Burling from 2009-2014 for its lobbying efforts in state legislatures to pass youth concussion laws, the ‘Lystedt Law,’ in all 50 states.”

Times on NFL’s use of the same research firm as the Tobacco Institute: “On at least two occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the N.F.L. hired a company whose client list included the Tobacco Institute to study player injuries. The league also hired a company — for a matter unrelated to player safety—that had performed a study for the tobacco industry that played down the danger of secondhand smoke.”

NFL’s response: “The Times asserts a connection between the League and the Tobacco Institute because both hired the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)…In fact, one of the research studies the Times alludes to was jointly commissioned by the NFL and the NFL Players Association. There is no evidence that SRI engaged in misleading or inappropriate research.”

Times on former NFL president Neil Austrian: “Neil Austrian, a former N.F.L. president, had previously run an advertising agency that under his leadership reversed its ban on taking tobacco clients. He called Philip Morris ‘an honorable company that sets high standards.’ It was during his tenure at the N.F.L. that the concussion committee was created.”

NFL’s response: “Mr. Austrian had no involvement with the MTBI Committee during his tenure at the NFL. Mr. Austrian was responsible for the business entities of the league.”

Times on Joe Browne, the NFL’s former senior vice president of communications: “When Congress was considering legislation that dealt with when a team owner could relocate a franchise, Joe Browne, a league official sought lobbying advice from a representative of the Tobacco Institute. ‘I would like to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss this bill with you further,’ Mr. Browne said in a 1982 letter to the institute’s president, Sam Chilcote.”

NFL’s response: “The Times implies that there was a nefarious relationship between Joe Browne and Sam Chilcote. In fact, Joe Browne (then NFL SVP of Communications) built a personal relationship with Sam Chilcote while Mr. Chilcote was at the Distilled Spirits Council in the 1970s…Mr. Browne contacted Mr. Chilcote in 1982 for some advice as someone he knew in Washington, DC about a subject completely unrelated to tobacco, concussions, or any player-related or medical issue. We have seen no evidence—from the Times or otherwise—that demonstrated their relationship had anything to do with tobacco or NFL health and safety.”

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

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Marriage Is Declining Because Men Are Pigs

by debbiemurch611 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at the Washington Monthly, Anne Kim muses on the spectacular decline in marriage over the past few decades:

The seeming decline of marriage includes one major caveat: educated elites. When it comes to marriage, divorce, and single motherhood, the 1950s never ended for college-educated Americans, and for college-educated women in particular….The share of young college-graduate white women who were married in 2010 was a little over 70 percent—almost exactly the same as it was in 1950.

….It’s also seemingly only Americans with four-year degrees or better who appear immune to the broader cultural and social forces eroding marriage. In 1950, white women with “some college,” such as an associate’s degree, were actually more likely to be married than their better-educated sisters. Today, it’s the opposite. Though women with a high school diploma or less have seen the sharpest drop in marriage rates, the decline has been almost as severe—and ongoing—for women just one short rung down the education ladder, regardless of race.

Why has marriage declined in America? Here’s my dorm room bull theory: it’s because men are pigs.

I know, I know: #NotAllMen blah blah blah. That said, let’s expand this a bit. Basically, an awful lot of men are—and always have been—volatile and unreliable. They drink, they get abusive, and they do stupid stuff. They’re bad with money, they don’t help with the kids, and they don’t help around the house. They demand subservience. They demand sex. And even on the one dimension they’re supposedly good for—being breadwinners—they frequently tend to screw up and get fired.

In other words, marriage has been a bad deal for women pretty much forever. But they’ve been forced into it by cultural mores and economic imperatives, and that’s the only reason it’s been nearly universal in the past.

Nothing has changed much about that. It’s still a bad deal for most women, but cultural mores and economic imperatives have changed, and that means more women can afford to do what’s right for themselves and stay unmarried these days.

But there’s one exception to this: the college educated. Well-educated men are fairly reliable; they have good earning power; they generally aren’t abusive; and they’ve been willing—slowly but steadily—to change their habits and help out with kids and housework. For college-educated women, then, marriage is a relatively good deal. For everyone else, not so much.

And that’s why marriage is declining among all groups except the college educated. For an awful lot of women, it’s just a lousy deal. They’re tired of putting up with all the crap they get from men, and so they’re opting out. They’ll opt back in when men start to pull their own weight. There’s no telling when that’s going to start happening.

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Lindsey Graham Just Went Off on Donald Trump and the GOP: "My Party Is Completely Screwed Up"

by Gabriel0192 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Shortly after Sen. Lindsey Graham issued a series of spectacular insults aimed at his former Republican presidential challengers—one of which included the line, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, no one would convict you”—Graham endorsed the Texas senator for president. On the Daily Show on Wednesday, he tried his best to explain why.

“I’m on the Ted train, absolutely,” Graham told host Trevor Noah, grinning and seemingly aware of his own bullshit. “What’s not to like?”

Noah then ran the clip of his memorable Cruz diss, and asked why things have changed. Smiling ruefully, Graham said, “It tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump.” He later laughed, “I’m gettin’ better at this.”

Graham proceeded to basically call out the entire Republican party, which he called “absolutely screwed up,” even warning Noah to prepare accordingly if Trump were to make it to the White House.

“If Trump wins, your days are numbered, pal,” he said. “Young, black, liberal guy from Africa is not going to work with him.”

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Lindsey Graham Just Went Off on Donald Trump and the GOP: "My Party Is Completely Screwed Up"

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Trump Protesters Don’t Have Much Public Support

by AlbertHeap570 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few days ago I suggested that a key question about the protests at Trump rallies was who the public blamed for the violence. Well, Vox conducted a survey recently asking exactly that, and it turns out that Trump is winning that contest too. Overall, respondents thought that protesters were responsible for the violence in Chicago by a margin of 54-28 percent.

That’s a pretty big margin. The crosstabs show that the biggest differences are by partisan leaning and age: Romney voters and senior citizens overwhelming think the protesters were responsible. Obama voters and the young think protesters weren’t responsible—though not by huge margins. Interestingly, responses were about the same between blue-collar and white-collar workers; between all education and income levels; and between workers and the unemployed. There was no regional variation at all, nor was there any difference between tea partiers and mainstream Republicans.

Bottom line: Only committed partisans and (barely) young voters are taking the protesters’ side on this. Seems like maybe they need a new strategy..

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Trump Protesters Don’t Have Much Public Support

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Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

by BrockBroadbent9 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m not sure what brought this on—oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly what brought this on. Anyway, I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:

Crack babies
Super predators
Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
Mad cow
Deepstar Horizon
Daycare child molesters
Ebola
ISIS/Syrian refugees

I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.

And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early 80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that—other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here, hive mind.

POSTSCRIPT: I should mention that despite my choice of illustration, I’ve never really blamed anyone for the tulip panic. Personally, I think tulips are worth going crazy over.

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Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

by ChandaThibeault Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Obama danced the tango during a state dinner in Argentina on Wednesday, after receiving a friendly invitation from a professional to join her on the dance floor. The president, who initially tried to decline the dance, nailed the impromptu performance, which was both wonderfully awkward and a delight to watch for everyone else.

Well, almost everyone. By morning light, political pundits jumped at the opportunity to chastise the president. That buzzkill brought to you by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

However, the advance person who let him do the tango, that person ought to be looking for work on somebody’s—in somebody’s campaign very far away. That was a tremendous mistake. It’s fine to go to Argentina, you want to do the work, but you’ve got to be careful of these little photo ops and optics. Baseball games and tango, that’s inconsistent with the seriousness of the day.

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

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Justice Alito Is Clueless About How Health Insurance Works. That’s a Big Problem for Women.

by AdelaidForbes Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has earned a reputation, fairly or not, that he doesn’t understand the reality of women’s lives. He’s been observed shaking his head and rolling his eyes at his female colleagues, particularly the venerable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she read a dissent from the bench opposing his opinions in a pair of gender discrimination cases. The oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell Wednesday probably did nothing much to improve that perception.

Alito is the author of the controversial 2014 decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, in which the court held that a for-profit corporation could deny employees insurance coverage for contraception because of its religious beliefs. As part of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, Congress required employers who provided their workers with health insurance to offer coverage for contraception at no cost. Hobby Lobby had objected to that requirement on the grounds that providing access to some contraceptives, such as IUDs—which the company’s owners insisted (wrongly) were abortifacients—violated their strongly held religious beliefs.

In his opinion in that case exempting Hobby Lobby from the contraceptive mandate, Alito promised the court’s ruling would have “precisely zero” impact on women and their ability to access free contraception because the Obama administration had provided a workaround for religious organizations, and that could be applied to Hobby Lobby, too. An organization merely had to alert the government of its religious objector status, and the government would work with its insurance companies to provide the mandated contraception coverage without the employer having to pay or otherwise get involved. That way, Alito suggested, women would still get their birth control, their employers would not compromise their souls, and everyone would win.

That workaround was at the center of the case the court heard Wednesday, after it was challenged by dozens of religious nonprofits, including the religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and various Catholic universities. They allege that even the simple act of notifying the government of their religious objections to the contraceptive coverage would still enable that coverage to be provided, and would therefore make them complicit in sinful activities.

The case puts Alito in a bind, given that he specifically relied on the accommodation the nuns are challenging to justify his opinion in Hobby Lobby. If he were consistent, he’d end up voting with the liberals in this case and ruling that sending some paperwork to the government to ask for a religious exemption is not a particularly onerous burden on their religious freedom—a conclusion eight out of nine lower courts have reached.

But it was clear during Wednesday’s oral arguments that Alito’s loyalties to the Catholic Church and strong commitment to religious freedom were clearly dominating his reasoning. He appeared to be grasping for an alternative in which the religious groups could distance themselves even further from insurance coverage that might compromise their beliefs. He raised an idea proposed by the petitioners: Instead of having the religious organizations’ insurance companies provide contraceptive coverage, the government ought to offer contraception-only insurance plans, maybe on the federal health insurance exchanges.

“Suppose that it were possible for a woman who does not get contraceptive coverage under…a plan offered by a religious nonprofit to obtain a contraceptive-only policy free of charge on one of the Exchanges. Why would that not be a less restrictive alternative to the notification requirement?” he asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who was arguing for the government. “Is it because these Exchanges are so unworkable, even with the help of a navigator?” he asked, oozing with irony.

Alito’s pointed question about the Affordable Care Act, which is responsible for creating the exchanges and which Alito voted twice to overturn, elicited laughs. With a bit of a rueful chuckle, Verrilli shot back that one obvious reason why such a plan wouldn’t work is that it would be illegal. No such insurance can be sold on the exchanges under federal law. But aside from that, creating separate contraceptive coverage as Alito suggested would defeat the very goal Congress outlined when it mandated the contraceptive coverage in the first place. Verrilli explained that overwhelming evidence shows that even small cost barriers to contraception keep women from using it, which in turn results in more unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Congress wanted women to be able to get contraception seamlessly, from their regular doctors and through their regular health insurance plans.

Having to go out and purchase a separate contraceptive plan—which he doubted any insurance company would offer anyway—would create huge headaches and additional barriers to women. “Consider this, please, from the perspective of the woman employee,” Verrilli told Alito. “She has a health plan from her employer. She goes to her doctor, her regular doctor. She may have a medical condition that makes pregnancy a danger for her. She may be one of the women…who needs contraception to treat a medical condition, or maybe she just wants the contraception that’s appropriate for her.” If the government adopted what Alito was proposing, he continued, “her regular doctor has to say to her, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you.'” The doctor would not only be prohibited from writing the prescription; she’d be unable to counsel her patient about her options because of the prohibitions on her employer-based insurance.

Alito was not persuaded. “Why do you assume that the doctor to whom the women would go for other services under the plan would be unwilling to provide those services under a separate plan that covers contraceptives?” he asked, suggesting that having another insurance plan was no more complicated than getting an additional card, as often occurs with dental or vision coverage.

It was the sort of question you might expect from someone who has had little experience with the world of private-sector health insurance. Except for a very brief stint at a private firm after law school, Alito has never worked in the private sector. He went from the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey to the Reagan Justice Department to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to the US Supreme Court—a seamless stretch of federal employment, where he has had access to some of the best private health insurance of any group of Americans. Plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program include a large, national network of doctors, protection against being charged extra for preexisting conditions, and unusual continuity of care. His questions during the arguments suggested that Alito has probably never worried about whether a doctor he wanted to see would take his insurance, much less encountered a physician who took no insurance at all because the paperwork simply had become too onerous.

A contraceptive-only insurance plan seems unwieldy on its face. Aside from the practical difficulties of Alito’s proposal, at least one amicus brief in the case indicates that his alternative would also be a huge violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because of the way it singles out women for disparate treatment in health care. Politically it’s also utterly unfeasible, as was his suggestion that such plans could be created if Congress offered to subsidize them at 115 percent of the cost. At a time when Congress and Republican state governments are trying to defund Planned Parenthood and shut down clinics that offer cheap contraception, it’s hard to imagine any Congress in the near future creating special subsidies to give women birth control plans, even if some elderly nuns and a few other religious groups don’t want to fill out a form.

Such practicalities didn’t seem to carry much weight with Alito. But he is consistent; Justice Ginsburg has repeatedly scolded him for being out of touch with the realities of women’s lives in previous discrimination and reproductive rights cases. Even so, women’s groups seemed fairly convinced that Alito would, for once, take their side in this case because of his opinion in Hobby Lobby. Before the oral arguments, Gretchen Borchelt, vice president of reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief in the Zubik case, said in a press call, “It would be unacceptable for the Supreme Court to invalidate a provision it proposed just two years ago in Hobby Lobby.” Predicting that Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed a likely vote for the government, she declared, “We’re confident in a 5-3 decision here.”

Alito seemed intent on dashing those hopes. At the very least, he appeared ready to force the government to burden women with a more complicated, less effective means for accessing contraceptive coverage to prevent a very minor compromise of religious freedom. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. seemed inclined to agree with him, at least in voting against the government’s position. And Kennedy expressed frustration with both sides of the case, leaving his critical swing vote completely unpredictable.

Fortunately for women, perhaps, the court is short a member right now, and even if Alito backpedals on his promises in Hobby Lobby and votes along with the other conservatives to defang the contraceptive mandate, the court is likely to deadlock 4-4 in the decision, which means the lower court rulings will stand. So women who work for religious organizations, including universities, in the eight federal appellate court circuits where the courts have ruled for the government in these cases, should be able to get free contraceptive coverage. But the women in 8th Circuit states—Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota—which voted in favor of the religious groups, may have to wait until after the presidential election, when a new president may finally be able to appoint a ninth justice to the court, and the conflict gets resolved once and for all.

Source: 

Justice Alito Is Clueless About How Health Insurance Works. That’s a Big Problem for Women.

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