Politics

Hillary Slams Bill’s Law: Hobby Lobby Decision ‘Deeply Disturbing’

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Hillary Clinton is the latest liberal to slam the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare’s birth control mandate Monday, calling the decision in favor of Hobby Lobby “deeply disturbing.” 

“It’s the first time that our court has said that a closely held corporation has the rights of a person when it comes to religious freedom,” Clinton said at the Aspen Ideas Festival, TPM reports. “I find it deeply disturbing that we are going in that direction.”

Hobby Lobby and small Pennsylvania business Conestoga Wood sued the Obama administration for forcing companies to provide four types of contraception, arguing that the birth-control mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was, ironically, signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The act says the government may only “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” when it meets a demanding test — one that the Obamacare birth-control mandate didn’t live up to.

When pressed on her husband’s approval of the law that struck the final blow to Obamacare’s pet provision, Clinton brushed aside his involvement.

When Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1993, “there were legitimate cases of discrimination against religions,” she told reporters. “This is certainly a use that no one foresaw.”

“It’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t believe she should use birth control.”

Hobby Lobby itself provides 16 types of contraception to its employees, making it highly unlikely that a sales clerk at one of the company’s stores would find herself in such a position. But despite the hit against President Barack Obama’s health care law, Democrats are already using Monday’s ruling as a campaign cry. (RELATED: White House Uses Hobby Lobby Decision As Campaign Club)

Liberal groups have uniformly decried the ruling as a hit against women’s rights. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential 2016 rival for Clinton, echoed Clinton in a series of tweets on the ruling Monday, calling the Supreme Court’s direction “very scary.” (RELATED: Elizabeth Warren Calls Opposition To Abortion A ‘Vague Moral Objection’)

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