My Berean colleague Mark Smith wrote a very nice blog on the two cases decided by the United States Supreme Court yesterday.  I commend it to you. But we were really hoping, I think, to hear from  the Court on the Hobby Lobby case.  You remember it. The Affordable Care Act (now in effect four years) required all entities defined by the statute to provide health care coverage for their employees (the Mandate) or pay a fine.  Coverage included contraceptives, even those that might arguably be abortifacients.  The Hobby Lobby company is owned by Christians and according to their filings, it is also operated as a Christian business.  Therefore when the Mandate was enacted, Hobby Lobby objected that it violated their First Amendment conscience rights or, more technically, free exercise rights and burdened their free exercise of religion.  They sued in Federal court to overturn the Mandate as applied to religious organizations such as they were and also sued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,of 1993 designed to further protect conscience rights against “substantial burdens” on religious freedom by the Federal government.  

So here we are with one more day left in this Court term, Monday, June 30.  Unless something unusual happens the Court will hand down its decision in this case.  My colleague Mark Smith was skeptical a few months ago about a ruling favorable to Hobby Lobby.  I was more optimistic then.  I am still cautiously optimistic, but realistic enough not to be shocked if I am wrong. I would like to hear from readers what they think.  By the way, we don’t have a bet on it.