Courts evaluating First Amendment and RFRA claims have long held that they are in no position to evaluate the validity, centrality, or reasonableness of a claimant’s sincere religious beliefs. And while there is room for courts to evaluate whether a claimant’s beliefs are indeed “sincere,” many courts shy away from doing so because of a perceived overlap between judgments about centrality and about sincerity.
In Hobby Lobby, the sincerity of the corporation’s beliefs was not in dispute. Hobby Lobby asserted (and HHS accepted the claim) that it had a sincere religious belief that life begins at conception, and that this belief prohibited it from facilitating access to contraceptives that operate after that point.
But recent news reports have shown that Hobby Lobby has, in fact, been involved in activities that seemingly run afoul of this belief – including investing in pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the contraceptives they raise objections to in their lawsuit, as well as drugs commonly used for abortion; investing in insurance companies that cover abortion and emergency contraceptives; and actually providing coverage for emergency contraception in their own health plan until 2012.
While these facts were not raised before the courts hearing Hobby Lobby’s RFRA claims, First Amendment precedent suggests that they would be relevant to a judgment about the sincerity of Hobby Lobby’s religious beliefs. Surely a company that believes life begins at conception would have more difficulty demonstrating the sincerity of its beliefs when some of its conduct supports activities that are in direct opposition to this stated belief. This is not to say that a court would ultimately conclude that Hobby Lobby’s religious beliefs were insincere – but rather, that a court could legitimately consider these facts without treading into the dangerous territory of judging the merits and centrality of Hobby Lobby’s beliefs to the exercise of its faith.