What Is the Hobby Lobby Lawsuit? Ruling, Mandate, and Reach

The Hobby Lobby lawsuit most often refers to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the 2014 Supreme Court case in which a 5–4 majority held that closely held for-profit corporations can refuse, on religious grounds, to cover certain contraceptives their employee health plans would otherwise have to include under the Affordable Care Act.¹ The ruling was decided under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, not the First Amendment, and it remains one of the most contested statutory decisions of the last decade.

Why Hobby Lobby Sued

The Affordable Care Act required most employer-sponsored health plans to cover preventive care for women at no cost, including all 20 FDA-approved contraceptive methods.¹ The Department of Health and Human Services exempted churches and very small employers outright, and it built a separate accommodation for religious nonprofits: the nonprofit could certify its objection, and the insurer would then provide the coverage separately, without the employer’s involvement or funding.² For-profit companies had no equivalent path.

Hobby Lobby, the national arts-and-crafts chain founded in 1972 and owned entirely by the Green family, sued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Greens, who are evangelical Christians, did not object to contraception generally. They objected to four specific methods they believed could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting: two types of intrauterine devices and two emergency contraceptives, Plan B and ella.³ The company continued to cover other forms of birth control and sterilization procedures.

The financial stakes drove the case to the Court. Hobby Lobby calculated that noncompliance would cost roughly $475 million a year in fines, based on a $100-per-day penalty across its approximately 13,000 employees. Dropping its health plan entirely would have triggered a separate $26 million annual penalty.⁴

A companion case, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Burwell, raised the same questions on behalf of a Pennsylvania cabinet company owned by the Mennonite Hahn family.⁵ The federal circuits split. The Tenth Circuit sided with Hobby Lobby, holding that corporations are “persons” under RFRA; the Third Circuit ruled against Conestoga Wood, concluding a for-profit, secular corporation cannot exercise religion. The Supreme Court consolidated the cases and heard argument on March 25, 2014.

What the Supreme Court Decided

On June 30, 2014, the Court ruled for Hobby Lobby. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas.²

Corporations Count as “Persons” Under RFRA

The threshold question was whether a for-profit corporation could claim religious rights at all. Alito said yes. The Dictionary Act defines “person” to include corporations, and RFRA draws no line between for-profit and nonprofit entities.¹ Protecting the corporation, he reasoned, protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control it. Forcing those owners to choose between incorporating and following their faith was, in his view, a choice Congress never meant to impose.

Substantial Burden and Least Restrictive Means

RFRA sets a two-part test. The government may substantially burden a person’s religious exercise only if that burden is the least restrictive way of advancing a compelling interest. The majority found a substantial burden: the Greens faced enormous financial penalties for refusing to provide coverage they sincerely believed facilitated the destruction of human life. Whether that belief was scientifically correct, Alito wrote, was not the Court’s role to judge.²

The Court assumed without deciding that the government had a compelling interest in cost-free contraceptive access. Even so, the mandate failed the second half of the test. A less restrictive tool already existed: the nonprofit accommodation, under which the insurer supplies the coverage separately at no cost to the employer. The Court saw no adequate reason to withhold that same mechanism from closely held for-profit companies.¹

Kennedy’s Concurrence

Justice Kennedy joined the majority but wrote separately to stress that the government does have a legitimate and compelling interest in guaranteeing employees access to contraceptive coverage.¹ He framed the ruling as narrow. The mandate failed because HHS had a workable alternative and declined to use it, not because the underlying goal was unimportant.

Ginsburg’s Dissent

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the principal dissent, joined by Justice Sotomayor in full and by Justices Breyer and Kagan in most parts. She called the holding one of “startling breadth” and warned it would let commercial enterprises opt out of virtually any law they found incompatible with their owners’ religious beliefs.⁶

Ginsburg drew a sharp line between religious nonprofits and for-profit companies. Nonprofits typically bring together people who share a faith. For-profit employers hire from the general public and employ workers with a “broad spectrum of beliefs.”¹ She questioned whether an artificial legal entity could hold religious convictions at all.

On the practical side, she noted that an IUD can approach a month’s full-time pay for a minimum-wage worker and argued the ruling would “deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.”⁷ She also flagged future scenarios. If religious objections could override the contraceptive mandate, what about employers who object to blood transfusions, antidepressants, or vaccinations? The Court, she wrote, was “ventur[ing] into a minefield.”

Justices Breyer and Kagan filed a shorter separate dissent noting the case could be resolved against the businesses on the merits without deciding whether for-profit corporations qualify as “persons” under RFRA.²

What Happened to the Contraceptive Mandate After the Ruling

The decision did not settle the contraceptive mandate. It launched nearly a decade of follow-on litigation and successive rule rewrites.

Obama Accommodation and Zubik v. Burwell

The Obama administration extended the nonprofit accommodation to closely held for-profit companies, finalizing regulations in July 2015. An eligible entity was one with no publicly traded stock and five or fewer individuals holding more than 50 percent of ownership.⁸

Religious nonprofits then challenged the accommodation itself, arguing that self-certifying their objection made them complicit in the coverage that followed. Seven of those cases reached the Supreme Court as Zubik v. Burwell (2016), including suits by the Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and Geneva College.⁹ Shorthanded after the death of Justice Scalia, the Court issued a brief per curiam opinion that vacated the lower court rulings and sent the cases back with instructions for the parties to work out an approach that respected both the objections and employees’ access to coverage.

Trump Expansion and Little Sisters of the Poor

In 2017 the Trump administration went well beyond what Hobby Lobby required. Interim final rules granted broad religious and moral exemptions from the mandate to nearly any employer, including for-profit companies, nonprofits, insurers, and individuals.¹⁰ The new rules also removed any requirement that objecting employers notify the government or insurer, so employees had no automatic route to separate coverage.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued. In Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania (2020), the Supreme Court upheld the Trump-era regulations 7–2, finding the agencies had statutory authority to issue the exemptions and that RFRA supported them.¹¹ The Court left open whether the rules could still be struck down as arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. Government estimates suggested between 70,500 and 126,400 women could be affected immediately, with up to 2.9 million potentially impacted.¹⁰

Biden Proposed Rules

In January 2023 the Biden administration proposed a rewrite that would eliminate the moral exemption while retaining the religious one.¹² To fill the coverage gap for employees whose employer claims a religious exemption and declines the optional accommodation, the proposal introduced “individual contraceptive arrangements.” Affected employees could obtain contraceptive services directly from a participating provider at no cost, with the provider reimbursed through marketplace issuers.¹³

How Far the Ruling Reaches

Alito tried to cabin the decision. He wrote that it applied to the specific contraceptive mandate at issue, would not automatically extend to insurance requirements like vaccinations or blood transfusions, and could not be used as a shield for illegal racial discrimination in hiring.¹

Ginsburg was skeptical of those limits, and litigation since has tested them. In Braidwood Management, Inc. v. EEOC, the Fifth Circuit allowed a for-profit corporation to claim a RFRA exemption from Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination based on the owner’s religious beliefs.¹⁴ Lower courts and legal scholars continue to work through whether the same framework can support religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws in employment, housing, and public accommodations.¹⁵

Because RFRA is a federal statute rather than a constitutional amendment, Congress can narrow or redefine who qualifies as a “person” under the law. No such legislation has passed.⁸

Other Hobby Lobby Lawsuits

The company has been party to other significant federal cases that are sometimes confused with the contraceptive ruling. In July 2017, Hobby Lobby settled a Justice Department civil forfeiture action over more than 5,500 ancient artifacts smuggled from Iraq, paying a $3 million penalty, forfeiting the items, and agreeing to new compliance measures.¹⁶ A separate 2021 forfeiture case ended with the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, purchased by Hobby Lobby in 2014 for the Museum of the Bible, being returned to Iraq.¹⁷

On the employment side, Hobby Lobby paid $50,000 in 2023 to settle an EEOC suit alleging it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by denying a Kansas cashier the use of a service dog and then firing her.¹⁸ The Illinois Human Rights Commission separately ordered the company to pay $220,000 in damages plus $97,000 in attorneys’ fees to Meggan Sommerville, a transgender employee barred from using the women’s restroom; the order became final in April 2019 after the Commission declined further review.¹⁹

1
Justia. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682
2
Legal Information Institute. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
3
Hobby Lobby Newsroom. Hobby Lobby Case
4
The Seattle Times. 5 Things to Know About Hobby Lobby’s Owners
5
SCOTUSblog. Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius
6
HIV Law and Policy. Ginsburg Dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby
7
NC Newsline. Hobby Lobby: The Best Eight Lines From Justice Ginsburg’s Dissent
8
Every CRS Report. Religious Exemptions for the ACA Contraceptive Coverage Mandate
9
Justia. Zubik v. Burwell, 578 U.S. ___
10
The Commonwealth Fund. Supreme Court Excuses Organizations With Religious or Moral Objections From Covering Workers’ Birth Control
11
The U.S. Constitution. Little Sisters of the Poor v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
12
CMS Newsroom. Biden-Harris Administration Proposes New Rules to Expand Access to Birth Control Coverage
13
Federal Register. Coverage of Certain Preventive Services Under the Affordable Care Act
14
Canopy Forum. LGBTQ Rights v. Religious Claims: Navigating the Tensions Between the RFRA and Title VII
15
Columbia Law Review. A Very Specific Holding: Analyzing the Effect of Hobby Lobby on Religious Liberty Challenges to Housing Discrimination Laws
16
U.S. Department of Justice. United States Files Civil Action to Forfeit Thousands of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Rare Cuneiform Tablet Bearing Portion of Epic of Gilgamesh Forfeited to United States
18
Insurance Journal. Hobby Lobby to Pay $50K to Settle EEOC Disability Suit
19
ACLU of Illinois. Hobby Lobby v. Sommerville