The issue is simple, they solution obvious. Then religion enters the playing field, and old men make a silly choice. As a result women are placed at a disadvantage.

That about sums up what just happened at SCOTUS – the Supreme Court of the United States.

The issue: should a privately held company be forced to comply with the law, even if it conflicts with the religious beliefs of their owners?

Obviously, this is a non-issue: When your religious beliefs conflict with the law, you better abide by law, or place yourself in harm’s way. In the civilized world, Law trumps Religion, right?

Well, not so fast. SCOTUS has actually managed to shoot itself in the foot on a very, very simple, clear-cut case.

The Affordable Care Act in the US states that companies must provide contraception coverage in their insurance packages. As it should be common knowledge, ‘contraceptives’ prevent pregnancies from happening, they do not terminate them. Contraceptives include IUD (‘Coil’ or ‘Spiral’) and ECP (‘morning after pill’).

An evangelical Christian-owned company in the US now refuses to cover for IUD and ECP. On the grounds that their religious beliefs prohibits this kind of contraception, they sued the US administration. Today SCOTUS ruled in favor of the company.

There are a number of remarkable items here:

• A company is a juridical person and, along with some other traits like skin color or sex, can’t have a religion. So even if the owners all adhere to the same religion, this is not true for their company. SCOTUS, it seems, has now ruled against a very simple principle – a ruling that leads to head-scratching and raised eyebrows around the world. How can you screw up something that simple?
• The complaint against the administration falsely claims that using IUD and ECP are abortions. This is factually untrue. That supreme judges can’t get something right that most female European teen-agers know may have something to do with the composition of the panel; it is definitely not a testament to their knowledge or level of preparedness to rule on such an important issue

SOTUS’ ruling is disquieting because it opens the door to religious discrimination against employees. Here it allows the company’s owners to withhold rights to their employees based on religious beliefs. That is a bad precedent. Even worse, the US uses case law – which is based on precedents. This ruling thus has far greater reach than a boneheaded decision like this would have in a country built on code law.

So women in the US again get to be told by religious people what they may, or may not do.

God bless America – her judges surely don’t.