A distinction between shareholders and the company lies at the very foundation of corporate law. The condition that there be such a distinction is not an add-on; it goes to the definitional nature of the government benefit itself. Hobby Lobby’s presumption that shareholders can be seen as distinct from the company for purposes of, say, limited liability, but identified with the company for purposes of religious freedom changes the nature of the government benefit itself. Closely held corporations, where permitted, may be able to forgo filing information returns to the IRS annually. In addition, the closely held corporation may qualify as an S corporation for tax purposes, allowing income to be passed through to shareholders and/or owners. In other words, pass-through income places the tax burden on the shareholders rather than the corporation.

What Lies Ahead for the Federal Debt, Interest Rates, and the U.S. Economy

Could they ever decide to go public? Below I’ll explore Hobby Lobby’s ownership, stock status, financial transparency, business philosophy, and more to shed light on this unique arts and crafts empire. But despite its massive size and success, Hobby Lobby remains a privately owned company under the control of its founding Green family. Unlike many other large retailers, Hobby Lobby has not gone public by listing shares on a stock exchange for anyone to buy and sell.

What Is a Closely Held Corporation?

Washington, D.C., had a law pending that was going to overturn a prohibition on businesses from firing women because they had had abortions. The House voted in favor of this law that would make it okay for businesses to fire women because they’d had abortions. And it didn’t get beyond the House. On that point, Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the court’s decision “is bound to have untoward effects” in other settings.

Hobby Lobby Stores

With more than 900 stores in 47 states, it is the largest privately-owned retailer of its kind in the world. Hobby Lobby was founded upon and operates according to Biblical principles, those of which have come under fire in the recent decade. The shares of a closely held company is hobby lobby publicly traded are known as closely held shares. Closely held corporations can have different business classifications, such as a C corporation, S corporation, or an LLC. It’s important to note that under the S corporation classification, profits and losses are passed through to the owners.

What Is the Difference Between a Closely Held Corporation and an LLC?

In these cases, it is the Court’s understanding that an accommodation may be made to the employers without imposition of a whole new program or burden on the Government. As the Court makes clear, this is not a case where it can be established that it is difficult to accommodate the government’s interest, and in fact the mechanism for doing so is already in place. Ante, at 43–44. In addition to asserting these very broadly framed interests, HHS maintains that the mandate serves a compelling interest in ensuring that all women have access to all FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 14–15, 49; see Brief for HHS in No. 13–356, at 10, 48. Under our cases, women (and men) have a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.

• RFRA’s purpose is specific and written into the statute itself.
• 310, 466 (2010) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).
• The reason why is hardly obscure.
• As Justice Ginsburg points out in the dissent, thousands of women work for companies, which can now claim that paying insurance premiums that could be used to provide contraceptives violates the company’s religious beliefs.

27  The principal dissent points out that “the exemption codified in §238n(a) was not enacted until three years after RFRA’s passage.” Post, at 16, n. The dissent takes this to mean that RFRA did not, in fact, “ope[n] all statutory schemes to religion-based challenges by for-profit corporations” because if it had “there would be no need for a statute-specific, post-RFRA exemption of this sort.” Ibid. This argument fails to recognize that the protection provided by §238n(a) differs significantly from the protection provided by RFRA. Section 238n(a) flatly prohibits discrimination against a covered healthcare facility for refusing to engage in certain activities related to abortion. If a covered healthcare facility challenged such discrimination under RFRA, by contrast, the discrimination would be unlawful only if a court concluded, among other things, that there was a less restrictive means of achieving any compelling government interest. In addition, the dissent’s argument proves too much.

Reading RFRA, as the Court does, to require extension of religion-based exemptions to for-profit corporations surely is not grounded in the pre-Smith precedent Congress sought to preserve. Had Congress intended RFRA to initiate a change so huge, a clarion statement to that effect likely would have been made in the legislation. See Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. 457, 468 (2001) (Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes”).

The largest such companies – Cargill, Koch Industries, Dell, Bechtel, and Aramark, to name just a handful – have tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars of revenue. (In 2008, Forbes reported that the 441 largest closely held companies employed more than 6 million people and enjoyed $1.8 trillion in revenue.) They are created under the same understanding of a wall existing between shareholders and the company. They could indeed not exist otherwise – the potential liability to individual investors would simply be too great. Much like Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A operates under Christian principles, which explains why the chain is closed on Sundays and why its corporate purpose is aligned to its owners’ religious beliefs and preferences. But what exactly does it mean for Hobby Lobby to be private? What are the benefits and downsides of this corporate structure?

See id., at 642 (Brennan, J., joined by Stewart, J., dissenting); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. 420, 578–579 (1961) (Douglas, J., dissenting as to related cases including Gallagher). Fi- nally, Justice Frankfurter’s opinion, which was joined by Justice Harlan, upheld the Massachusetts law on the merits but did not question or reserve decision on the issue of the right of the corporation or any of the other challengers to be heard. See McGowan, 366 U. S., at 521–522.

Hobby Lobby wanted the same accommodations as religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations. But here is where corporate law assumptions should have led the Court to reach the opposite outcome in Hobby Lobby itself. Whether choosing the corporate form is a burden on the rights of business people’s rights cannot be determined in a vacuum. Rather, the best way to answer the question is whether the nature of the government benefit – the corporate form – is best seen as closely connected to the exercise of shareholders’ religious beliefs.