What influence is the Hobby Lobby decision going to have on colleges? John Rosenberg of Minding the campus reports below.

Hobby Lobby’s Impact on Colleges

As everyone knows by now, the Supreme Court has just held in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (discussed here) that requiring the owners of a closely held family business to provide employees abortifacients that violated their sincerely held religious beliefs was barred by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (passed virtually unanimously by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by a Democratic president in 1993). That act provides that substantial burdens can be placed on religion only when a no less burdensome method of achieving a compelling governmental purpose is available.

This rather unremarkable result has been greeted by the left’s customary hysteria, most of it featuring renewed chanting of the “War on Women!” mantra characterized by a deep misunderstanding of corporations, both profit and non-profit. Largely unappreciated amid all this sound and fury over whether corporations are “persons,” however, lie some serious threats to an important segment of higher education, religiously affiliated colleges and universities. These threats have been imminent ever since Obama came to office (for discussions of those threats see “IS ANOTHER FUROR OVER RELIGIOUS LIBERTY COMING?” and “OBAMA’S END RUN AROUND ENDA”), but now they are much more clear and present. According to the Becket Fund For Religious Liberty there are 27 institutions of higher learning currently involved in litigation against the HHS mandate. (A list of the institutions and all other pending cases is here.)