With a far-right Supreme Court majority ruling in Hobby Lobby 5-4 that for-profit closely-held corporations have religious rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Justice Ginsburg is rightly warning that the Court has “ventured into a minefield.”

Although the Court says its ruling is limited to “closely held corporations” like Hobby Lobby (where one family owns and runs the corporation), there is nothing in its reasoning that doesn’t apply to any other for-profit corporation, such as Exxon. And even some closely-held family corporations are enormous. For instance, Justice Ginsburg points out that the Mars candy company has 72,000 employees and takes $33 billion in revenue.

Large corporations already wield enormous power over ordinary Americans, and the far-right Justices have just handed them another way to exercise that power.

The Court that gave corporations the same right as people to spend money to influence our elections now says that these same corporations have religious beliefs. Dare we ask what rights they will be given next?

And the majority’s assertion that their decision today won’t give businesses the power to ignore anti-discrimination laws is far from persuasive, raising more questions than it answers. The five conservatives say:

The principal dissent raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. See post, at 32–33. Our decision today provides no such shield. The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.

Note that the only type of discrimination the majority bothers to mention is race discrimination, although the dissent’s discussion that they cite mentioned other types. Their decision not to include other types of discrimination was surely deliberate and leaves women and LGBT people (to name just a few) left out in the cold. Businesses whose owners cite their religion to support their anti-equality positions will eagerly take note.

Justice Ginsburg’s description of this case as a minefield could well be an understatement.

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