The Supreme Court recently ruled that “closely held” corpora-tions don’t have to pay for workers’ contraception. This decision applies not just to family businesses. An estimated 9 out of 10 businesses are “closely held”, that is more than half their stock is owned by five or fewer individuals (not just family members). Some of these companies are huge and include some of the best-known names in American business, such as Mars (70,000 workers) and Cargill (more than 140,000). Such enterprises can now refuse to offer contraception coverage if they assert a religious view. The majority of the justices said: “Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them.”

The Supreme Court majority was thus only interested in protecting the free-exercise rights of owners of corporations such as Hobby Lobby stores. The interests of the employees were, naturally, of secondary importance. After all, the corporations are America, are they not?

The good news is that it takes a lot of work and expense to refuse access to contraception. You would need to work out special wording with the insurers and possibly confront a legal challenge from employees, querying the alleged “deeply held religious views”.

The party politicians who form the majority on the Court do not hesitate to use their position to further entrench the power of businesses. Actually, this is as much against the interest of rank-and-file female Republicans as it is against that of Democrats. Republicans may start to wonder whether packing the Court with people without judgment or common sense was such a good idea after all.

Epicurus would sadly conclude that the US is moving inexorably towards a massive social and political calamity, and doing so blithely, without having a clue what it is doing.