I've just finished reading Alan Meese and Nathan Oman's article, Hobby Lobby, Corporate Law, and the Theory of the Firm, which somehow slipped passed the secular liberals at the Harvard Law Review. It is an excellent argument in favor of the proposition that for profit corporations are persons for purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It's also a devastating demolition of the absurd corporate law professors brief in that case (about which I have also written).
Meese and Oman "make three basic claims":
First, corporate law does not discourage for-profit corporations from advancing religion. Second, such businesses do not undermine the goals of corporate law, nor would it undermine such goals to grant these firms religious exemptions from otherwise neutral laws in appropriate cases. Third, given the plausible reasons for protecting religious exercise by for-profit corporations, there is no reason to reject the most natural reading of RFRA’s text, namely that “person” includes private corporations of all kinds. This does not mean, of course, that every RFRA claim by a for-profit corporation should be successful. In some cases there will be no substantial burden on religious practices, and in other cases the government may have a compelling reason for regulating corporations. RFRA, however, does not assign the task of weeding out such undesirable religious exemptions to the definition of “person.” Rather, other statutory provisions do that work.
I find all three claims fully convincing. You will too.
