In decisions about Obamacare the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can levy a tax on individuals who do not purchase health insurance and that it can require employers who do not provide health benefits to pay a penalty (tax).   Only a few months later the court ruled that business owners who profess religious objections to some forms of birth control can opt out of that particular portion of coverage without paying a penalty.

Reductio ad absurdum is a Latin phrase that the Court’s Justices surely encountered in their introductory logic classes. It is a method of showing that a decision or argument is absurd because it gives rise to ridiculous or unworkable conclusions. Their decisions imply that five of the justices may have been napping during logic classes.

The Court has created an exemption from taxes or penalties for those who have religious objections. Do religious exemptions apply only to Obamacare? If so, why? Will similar religious objections exempt some of us from taxes to pay for government killing in the form of death penalties or drone strikes or does it relate only to birth control?

Will all religious beliefs be given equal treatment under the law? There are religions that object to blood transfusions. Why shouldn’t adherents be exempt from purchasing transfusion coverage? Some Muslim sects object to educating girls on religious grounds. Can they be exempted from paying school taxes? Upon asking such questions, it becomes clear that the Court has granted special treatment to one branch of Christianity and that it would be ridiculous to grant such treatment to all religions. Uh-Oh, the court has run head-on into the constitutional prohibition against establishment of a government-favored religion.

The intended beneficiaries of the ObamaCare law are the individuals who are covered by health benefit plans. The law provides that certain benefits including birth control will be available on the advice of a physician chosen by the patient. The Court has allowed employers to carve out forms of birth control that they object to. Can those who have religious objections to mind-altering drugs carve out those prescribed for patients attempting to withdraw from drug, alcohol or tobacco addiction?

Are the acceptable objections only those with a religious basis? What if an atheist claims that he has ethical objections to birth control similar to those raised by the Hobby Lobby plaintiffs? Are the ethical objections of Christians superior to those of atheists? Uh-Oh, here comes the constitutional prohibition against establishing a religion again.

Historically, freedom of religion has included unlimited freedom of belief and of expression but not unlimited practice of religion. Examples of limitations on the practice of religion include state and federal bans on the use of hallucinogenic drugs in religious ceremonies and the prohibition of snake handling in some states. But now the Court has extended freedom of religious practice to include corporate employment practices – a precedent that creates many opportunities for mischief.

Previous religious exemptions from laws have not been absolute. For example, when we had compulsory military service, conscientious objectors were granted exemption from military duty but required to perform an alternative service. Many of them served on the front lines as medics, risking life and limb alongside the combatants. Our current court granted an unlimited religious exemption and imposed no alternative obligation.

The mess created by the Roberts Court will probably remain for future justices to correct. Obviously it was no accident. Since at least the 1950s extreme conservatives from the John Birch Society, some religious groups, and now the Tea Party, which seems to control the national GOP, have complained bitterly that “activist” judges were creating new rights by overruling both federal and state laws. An “activist” decision brought racial integration to public schools that had been segregated by state laws. That was done over the religious objection of Christians who found biblical prohibition of race mixing. The court struck down laws that prohibited non-Christians from holding public office. Some of those are still on the books but can’t be enforced. The court did away with laws prohibiting the practice of birth control and in the Roe v Wade decision it ruled that women have the right to control their own bodies; including the right to an abortion if they so choose. Extreme conservatives saw those decisions as “legislating from the bench”.

Conservatives never gave up and they carried the fight to the polls, electing presidents who would nominate judges more to their liking who are at least as “activist” as their predecessors. Those are the justices who granted corporations and the wealthy the right to make unlimited political contributions. Now they have created a religious exemption from providing an otherwise mandatory health care benefit. Religious conservatives may find that the decision looks fair on the surface but when other religions demand equal treatment and exemption from other laws we all may wish the justices had stayed awake in logic class and understood Reductio ad absurdum.