IIRC, the courts have the ability to dismiss religious objections as false if the plaintiff cannot support that it really is against his religion. There will be very few cases where laws clash with truly solid claims of that nature, and the nastiest of those battles (Gay Rights) is already being fought and lost by those same groups.
Not under the reasoning of this case. It only requires that a belief be
sincere, not reasonable or historically held. In this case Hobby Lobby adopted this belief only to fight this court battle against the ACA, previously offering these exact contraceptives under their insurance. It was still viewed as a sincere and valid belief.
And frankly no-one on the court or outside it believes that courts should be in the position of judging which beliefs are valid or sincere. Quoting Ginsburg (dissenting);
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga surely do not stand alone as commercial enterprises seeking exemptions from generally applicable laws on the basis of their religious beliefs. ... Would RFRA require exemptions in cases of this ilk? And if not, how does the Court divine which religious beliefs are worthy of accommodation, and which are not? Isn’t the Court disarmed from making such a judgment given its recognition that “courts must not presume to determine … the plausibility of a religious claim”?
Would the exemption the Court holds RFRA demands for employers with religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)? According to counsel for Hobby Lobby, “each one of these cases … would have to be evaluated on its own … apply[ing] the compelling interest-least restrictive alternative test.” Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.
...
There is an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts “out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims,” United States v. Lee (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment), or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held. Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield, by its immoderate reading of RFRA. I would confine religious exemptions under that Act to organizations formed “for a religious purpose,” “engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,” and not “engaged … substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.”
AMost notably the judgement of when something is incompatible with their beliefs is left entirely to the challenger. This most definitely does have implications for future gay rights cases, notably those about
anti-gay discrimination by companies. As they point out at the end of the argument, the true limiting factor in this case comes from Kennedy, not the majority ruling.
No, they specifically bar things like transfusions and whatnot. This is basically contraceptives-specific.
They state that they are not covered by this ruling, not that they wouldn't find exemptions. The quote from the majority;
HHS and the principal dissent argue that a ruling in favor of the objecting parties in these cases will lead to a flood of religious objections regarding a wide variety of medical procedures and drugs, such as vaccinations and blood transfusions, but HHS has made no effort to substantiate this prediction. HHS points to no evidence that insurance plans in existence prior to the enactment of ACA excluded coverage for such items. Nor has HHS provided evidence that any significant number of employers sought exemption, on religious grounds, from any of ACA’s coverage requirements other than the contraceptive mandate….
In any event, our decision in these cases is concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them.
Emphasis mine. That is, the floodgates aren't open yet so must not exist. And other government interests might be met with other least restrictive means. That is, the court might not be able to come up with a less restrictive way of achieving the same goal. That's the reason they struck this one down (again, see Kennedy's concurrence).
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