Wednesday, March 14, 2012

By The Time I Get To Arizona (You'll Have Been Canned)

So, what happens when Arizona combined being a right-to-work state with its own version of the Blunt Amendment?  As ABL notes, this.

Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the  Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

Lesko said this bill responds to a contraceptive mandate in the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law March 2010.

“My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion,” Lesko said. “All my bill does is that an employer can opt out of the mandate if they have any religious objections.”

Now here's the best part:  being a right-to-work state means you can be fired for anything that is not expressly protected or prohibited as discriminatory.  An earlier version of the bill did have this "protection" in it, as far as anything was being "protected" in his horrendous legislation:

“A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source.”

In other words, since taking retributive action against the employee for having insurance that covers birth control or getting it from a place other than the employer's insurance plan under that clause would count as discrimination (and therefore be illegal), even in a right-to-work state like Arizona, you couldn't be fired specifically for being on the pill.

That of course was before this protection was in fact removed from the bill.  Which means that yes, you can technically be fired for being on birth control because it offends your employer's religious sensibilities, specifically because the bill does not protect Arizona employees from employers seeking to do so as discriminatory.  Nice, huh?

Far worse an indictment of right-to-work laws, but this bill is also awful as it puts employers in charge of their employees' health coverage.  They can simply opt out of covering anything they want to.  So no, as an employer in Arizona, under this you could simply cut a whole buch of costs and say "No, your insurance doesn't cover it.  Not the policy from us."  Hey, who's going to stop them?

The Supreme Court?  Well, better hope there's not a Republican in the White House in 2013/2014 when this law, if passed, would get up there, eh?

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