In a few short weeks, the Supreme Court may very well find in favor of a man who is suing to stop PrEP coverage for millions because he objects to theoretical possibility that someone he employs could one day access PrEP via insurance, and this "encourages and facilitates homosexual behavior."
If that then what could be consequences for actions related to preventing or promoting pregnancy? Could an employer oppose cuts to abortion funding as it would make it more likely some employees would take time off for pregnancy? Or would he oppose any form of sexual activity resulting in pregnancy?
Cases like this infuriate me, not just because of how absurd the claim that even the potential need for a medication encourages anything but also the completely dense mindset that only gay people can get HIV. It's like they all forgot that Magic Johnson has it, as well as many other straight people.
Exactly. Most people with HIV are hetero Black cis women. Also, HIV is transmissible through IV drug use, which is not, it turns out, sex. The fundamental aspects of this whole thing are absurd and willfully ignorant.
My sincerely held atheist religious beliefs are violated by the existence of Catholic schools in my town indoctrinating children into a religious lifestyle. I should not like their school buses using streets my taxes pay for. Do I have a case, or nah?
(P.S. In my town, they even use the buses and drivers belonging to the public school district. Don’t know how much, if any, they reimburse *that* expense.)
I’m a Protestant and I object to my tax $$ being used to pay for private Catholic education under Texas new voucher scheme. I’d have a case under this, right?
How though? Insurance is a service. This would imply some level of ownership over employees that extends beyond the workplace arrangements.
American employers thinking they literally own their employees? Sounds like crazy talk to me.
That’s the whole point. Exerting control. The objective is tell prospective employees ‘we don’t support people who are homosexual with preventative health measures so we don’t want you in our workplace’. It’s discrimination. They want doctors who only consult the Bible before they prescribe drugs
I think people should also be on guard for how this argument could eventually extend to enabling legal grounds for slavery. If you can control employee's personal lives, you can control their bodies eventually too.
You’re right but it’s a terrifying thought. I’m not sure things have got to a point where that prospect would even be possible… or am I just being naieve? I hope not 🤞
That's absolutely the goal. Peter Thiel has a viral clip explaining how to use AI and social media to control the world. It's hard to accept because of how other-worldly evil it all is. But you do a disservice to those around you by denying reality. Choose to stay in the anima, choose the dirt.
I feel like I’m living in a poorly scripted sci-fi movie that forgot to include a character who rescues humanity from the evil overlords. I guess it’s up to us…
We are in the beginning phases of the next age's creation myth. Things have to get dark before everything changes for the better. I believe we are going through darkness for a reason. God is great.
Northern District of Texas, of course
I was like "but how do they have standing?" and then I saw this and understood.
It explains basically all of it
I figured it had to be Kaczmaryk (more likely) or Ho. I would have gotten it with my third guess though: O'Connor.
So, this has nothing to do with me but I’m going to find a problem with it anyway. WTF is wrong people and how do these not real situations make it to the SC? Do we not have better things to waste our time and money on?!?
That’s fucking hilarious. I wish it was true. I’ve never had luck with men, and I would love to become a lesbian. I think it would work better. But, we don’t fucking have a choice. Assholes. You’re born the way you’re born.
Call me crazy, but I'm not optimistic about this being decided by the same court that decided Hobby Lobby. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...
worse court
Apparently some conservative megadonor named Steven Forrest Hotze is behind this?Or he’s the head of the organization that is… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_...
The wild part is that the majority of the case isn't religious liberty by any reasonable definition, it's about the minutiae of the appointments clause which is so much weirder
I want to live in a world where judges read stuff like this and simply write back "if this really bothers you so much, you need bigger problems" and we all get tacos.
Also "I object to gay people" is not an argument, it's a confession that none of the 185 other pages about the structure of task forces are in any way sincere
Not to mention, women use PrEP as well.
I guess this would also end SNAP, since SNAP benefits might be used by somebody, somewhere, to purchase and eat pork or shellfish. Or purchase meat and dairy products and then put them together and eat them, like a cheeseburger or pizza or lasagna.
No, but only because we’re in a weird fucking world where corporations have standing inaccessible to taxpayers via this One Weird ACA Trick.
I guess not, since stores aren't required to accept SNAP.
That would require these people to have actually read the religious texts they supposedly hold so dear. There is little evidence they have.
Also DoD spending invalid because Quakers are pacifists
can't wait until ULine files a suit to make it illegal for anyone to have sex outside of marriage
I am still so upset that ULine turned out to be immensely Horrible. Thank god we still have McMaster-Carr
And grainger. The only thing I know about their politics is that one of their email footer ads said to make sure you stock the right size PPE for everyone with an image of women on a shop floor.
Does your strange cost two thousand dollars a month and get passed on to collective insurance rates? Is your infidelity bisexual and making you in need of therapy yourself? In that vein, ULine wastes half our domestic tree resources on catalogs and should get their strange from tariffed Canada.
Even reading this bullshit in a brief that made it all the way to SCOTUS, in 2025, is maddening. This should have been laughed out of a lower circuit court almost immediately.
Any time you see someone making the argument that “____ is bad because the Bible/a religious book says so”, and nothing else, it’s because their actual reasons for thinking it’s bad are irrational and they have to cherrypick vague verses in order to give their argument an aura of legitimacy.
Surely the historical record bears out that the play is to to paper over such core arguments with as many feeble appeals to rationality as a bigot's imagination can conjure
The religious right uses God and religion as merely a tool, to make it LOOK like their arguments are credible rather than fueled by pure hatred. It is PR for them, nothing more.
If Jesus came back, the “right,” religious or otherwise, would immediately deport him… likely to a prison.
Standing issues aside, what the actual fuck
Also foundationally faulty logic as the employee needing the meds may have been infected by their spouse within the confines of marriage. So by their own logic they are harming an innocent victim who fully conformed to their “closely held personal (Hobby Lobby) beliefs”. Asshole across the board.
“The animus is a feature not a bug”
Pretext—and openly confessing to their use of pretext while at the same time insisting YOU argue against it in good faith—has always, I’ve suspected, been part of these people’s real kink
They believe... But many people don't And freedom of religion means we don't base our laws on the rules in one religious text most of whose believers don't even obey Freedom of religion is also freedom from it, if that is your choice
Could we call Sterne for the defence? “…so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,--pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”
Or, "So what if it does?"
So scary
Oh but this is their speshiality!
HIV does give a fuck about your god
From the "freedom" caucus.
Could a Jehovah Witness sue because their insurance covers blood transfusions for others that is forbidden by their religion?
Another case made up for the Roberts court. We’ve seen this before.
Standing? There are clearly inconsistent rules in US courts. Because US courts are corrupt garbage.
21 days ago…
I'm deeply unsettled by the fact that this may come out the same day as skrmetti
Right???!!!
Damn drugs turning people gay 😥🤣🤣🤣 what kind of non sense is this? They should arrest the man for waste tax payers dollars and court time when it could be used for real cases. I'm sueing him for aiding criminals because he's wasting this time in court thus stopping people from being sentenced faster
In the longer run, if that argument goes through, they can and will apply it to everything they can claim encourages pre-marital sex and/or goes against God's ordained plan for sex i.e. procreating... that means _all_ contraceptives but also the HPV vaccine.
"Five of the six respondents "do not currently participate in the health care market."" And those 5 should not even have standing to sue, they should be dropped as parties. This shit is so fucking annoying. Fucking same shit as the website bs ruling before.
I don't understand how /anyone/ has standing in this case but yes absolutely that makes everything a thousand times worse
I hate them all so much
Yet another great reason to uncouple jobs and health insurance.
*will find
Who’s going to tell them that homosexuality has existed for thousands of years, with evidence of same-sex relationships dating back to ancient civilizations, like in Mesopotamia & ancient Egypt, around 3000 BCE?
That argument doesn’t work, unfortunately. They come back with: “Yes, exactly! Those were godless pagan societies! Sodom and Gomorrah! Did you know that the fall of Rome was God’s punishment for all the gay sex they were having? It’s true, look it up!”
Do they understand that straight people can also get hiv?
They don't care - just like they don't care that white people can also use SNAP or Medicaid.
That's not important to them, they will smear any straight person who contracts it as gay or otherwise morally impure for the disease Of course, they themselves would NEVER be vulnerable to it because they're morally, spiritually, bodily pure Christians and no disease can touch them because of it 🙄
Can Jehovah's Witnesses sue to not cover blood transfusions?
Looking forward to the lawsuit from a faith healer who says that analgesic sales violate his freedom of religion and should be made illegal, because they stop people from needing his magic healing hands. He’ll probably win 6-3 with this SCOTUS.
You know Benny Hinn is probably firing up a lawsuit to ban pain relievers as we speak.
Be HEALED!
I don't see how this person even got this heard. It used to be that you couldn't be granted standing just because of some hypothetical harm at some undetermined future date.
he knows this wont stop fuck all, he just wants the queers to die
"I shouldn't be required to give my employees meal breaks because it facilitates and encourages gluttony."
So, Christian/Catholic churches will be banned for the same reason, right?
Sure, but also they don’t want to pay at all. And they hate gay people.
Gotta love how something like this has standing. Having every facet of US institutions be nakedly, utterly full of shit is so exhausting.
We mustn’t be deceived by their pretexts. We know why they really want to ban it. It kills people they don’t like, as during the 1980s. If they didn’t pick this obscene justification (no religious commandment exists to block medicine for gay people), they’d invent another for the same result.
Yep, in the ‘80s, they were happy to let AIDS run rampant because “it only kills gays.” When they realized (😮) that straight people could get it, too, then they wanted a cure, and even that was halfhearted, since it was just those promiscuous people. Years wasted that would have saved millions.
getting paid for my work also facilitates homosexual behavior by allowing me to stay alive, so I guess they'll take that away next
It wouldn't surprise me.. also don't be concerned about my pfp ;)
I am concerned lol
Shhh don't give them ideas
That's why we got marriage rights and not employment rights.
What if a gay couple asks him to design their wedding website?
This world needs more Luigi and less this.
So many lessons to be had on what happens when power is handed to malevolent piles of manure.
Create a rationale, however strained, that monies allocated are associated with immigrants, DEI, trans rights, gay rights, women’s rights, etc and then sell it.
Oh shit. This is why Hobby Lobby is evil. They're gonna cite that as precedent.
🤨
I realize everything is crazy but the public health implications…I am naively hoping that somewhere there’s an adult in the room that remembers the 80s. Or even the 90s!
I'm very afraid that the adults in the room who do remember, may have had a different perspective of those times than you and I did.
Yeah, my main perspective, even as a mostly straight kid with no intention of ever getting near an IV drug, was terror. And I suppose that might appeal, regardless of the cost. Hopefully not, though.
They weren’t terrified. They were delighted
Unfortunately true
How can five of the six sue when they literally have no reason to be on the suit since they do not participate in the Healthcare market being discussed?
Ignorance in high places
Are they aware HIV is not limited to homosexual behavior, and who would be tracking the sexual activity to determine?
That’s fucked up
Jesus
In my wild fantasy, KBJ grabs a metal folding chair and starts whipping it around the courtroom: "Where's the standing, motherfuckers? Show me the fucking standing!" Why does KBJ, the smartest one, not simply eat the other eleven? [apologies to Kagan and Sotomayor]
Screw your religious beliefs.
Should be thrown out of court on the grounds the lawsuit has not impact on the person bringing it.
This is our broken justice system on full display. People with no standing, and an laughably obvious hate based agenda getting access to the highest court in the land that has been handpicked by OTHER hate fueled soulless monsters, to deprive people of their life liberty and happiness.
How does this fact pattern differ from if a business owned by a JW believer (with all due respect to their genuinely held religious beliefs) demanded an end to all blood transfusion coverage?
It doesn’t. Except that SCOTUS Republicans hate gay people so are willing to support stupid arguments that lead to their preferred outcomes.
5 OF 6 DO NOT PARTICIPATE in the insurance market? LACK of standing, assholes!!!
There is obviously a homophobic agenda tied to this, it it’s also part of a larger narrative of private businesses revolting at having to cover many important drugs like weight loss injectables. Ultimately, we’re talking about companies working towards not providing insurance at all.