that they have actual religious beliefs. a large company with diverse owners could not claim exclusion from the contraceptive mandate under this decision. let s head out to the u.s. supreme court. a lot of demonstrators there this morning. what s the reaction? there s been a huge reaction out here, carol. at the supreme court, you can see behind me, demonstrators and these were demonstrators behind me who were in favor of religious freedom rights, in favor of hobby lobby and as soon as that decision came down, when the justices, the majority of the conservative justices ruled in favor of hobby lobby they started cheering claiming victory. i can tell you we ve been out here all morning, carol, and this is being heated rhetoric from all sorts of contentious issues. we re talking obamacare. we re hearing from demonstrators on both side of that issue.
i m getting the gist of it so far. it is a 5-4 decision in favor of ll. hobby lobby does not have to pay for the disputed birth control techniques. however, as far as we can tell and then we re going to be sorting this out. justice alito s opinion says this only applies to what he calls closely held companies. remember, hobby lobby is a privately held company where the religious beliefs of the founders inform the whole operations of the company. one of the big issues here is a lot of big businesses in america are privately held, so the question was would this decision apply to them? what justice alito holds in his opinion is that hobby lobby as a closely held company does not have to pay for these disputed birth control techniques, but it does not appear to be a blanket ruling that says any privately held company can suddenly decide
ginsburg, ginsburg writes the decision of the majority is startling in breadth. she thinks it s a very expansive not narrow decision. she makes this is very much a blow to women s rights. she says in the courts view, in the majority view it is very clear that a corporation s religious beliefs should not necessarily outweigh thousands of women that are employed by hobby lobby. okay, and then as as far as the ratifications ramifications and how this ruling may affect businesses across the country. it s really interesting. i see some major implications. for starters in what it means to work for a publicly held company versus a rieft company. as we were hearing earlier, closely held private companies in america are not a rare thing. most of new jobs are being
traded companies, big companies. hobby lobby was a family-owned company. it started back in the 70s. the owners are eadvantage gel christians. this is the first big test of obamacare since it was found constitutional here two years ago. so, of course, this could open the flood gates to more lawsuits, challenging other provisions in the affordable care act and it will be interesting to see how the obama administration reacts to this because the contraceptive mandate was a key provision. this was a big blow to the obama administration. a big win for hobby lobby. the obama administration argued that if companies like hobby lobby were not required to provide certain types of contraceptions for their
i think it could. the issue of the supreme court is always an issue during presidential campaigns and if democrats were to lose a case like this, they could try and appeal to women using this case and by the way there are lots of other challenges to the affordable care act that are pending on tax issues, for example, that could also be used in a presidential campaign. let s face it, carol, everything the court does is political. these days, every decision can be viewed through a political lens and this one in particular, but i just want to add one thing to something jonathan said because there may be a way for the court here to kind of come out with a more talmudic if you will, that would say hobby lobby you have your rights but maybe there would be a way for these employees to get their birth control through federal subsidies, not through your company. maybe your company doesn t have to pay for it, but maybe the