WeWork, Hobby Lobby, and the enduring effects of hyperbole

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Something good happened on Twitter Monday.

New Republic staff writer Emily Atkin was contemplating WeWork’s new policy against (1) allowing employees to expense meals with meat and (2) paying for red meat, poultry, and pork at company events.

Atkin defended this policy against the misguided charges that WeWork was “banning” its employers from eating meat. “You want to eat meat at WeWork? That’s great. Buy it yourself. WeWork is not ‘banning’ meat. They’re just not going to pay for you to eat it.”

The obvious parallel occurred to her followers: Wasn’t WeWork’s meat policy just like Hobby Lobby’s policy that violated Obama’s contraception mandate? Hobby Lobby wasn’t banning its employers from using morning-after contraception; it was just saying you have to pay for it yourself.

Combating that analogy, Atkin tweeted, “For the meat/birth control comparison to work, Hobby Lobby would have to say they’re only paying for certain types of birth control, but would pay for the other types if you medically need that type.”

“Hobby Lobby covered 16 out of 20 birth control methods,” replied Casey Mattox, a senior fellow on tolerance and free speech issues at the Charles Koch Institute. Atkin responded, “Gonna be honest — I didn’t actually know that, and I’m kind of shocked that I didn’t.”

“People are pointing out that this is actually *exactly* what Hobby Lobby said, and it turns out THAT IS CORRECT and now I have some thinking to do because I literally had no idea,” she added later.

This seems to be a case study in how political hyperbole shapes the way we understand major stories. Atkin is not alone in having missed this basic and significant fact about a consequential Supreme Court case. Deroy Murdock described the hysterical framing of the decision back in 2014. “In the Left’s fantasy world,” he wrote, “the militant Christians at Hobby Lobby police single female employees to assure that they have not engaged in sinful, pre-marital sex.” As Murdock and Mattox pointed out, Hobby Lobby covered 16 categories of birth control, but declined to cover four, which its owners believed to be abortifacients. Reality was hardly reflected in the apocalyptic spin promoted by Democrats like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. “Republicans want to do everything they can to have the long hand of government, and now the long hand of business, reach into a woman’s body and make healthcare decisions for her,” she lamented in the wake of the decision.

Back in 2014, conservatives like Murdock were drawing hypotheticals similar to WeWork’s policy, suggesting liberals would be uncomfortable if the shoe were on the other foot. “Those who are screaming themselves hoarse after the Hobby Lobby decision would agree that [Yeshiva University] need not serve unkosher food, and PETA need not include calf meat on its menu,” Murdock wrote.

These two cases aren’t perfect parallels, but the impulse to defend WeWork’s right not to pay for its employees’ consumption of products the owners object to on environmental grounds (rather than religious grounds) is worth noting. And Atkin’s willingness to reconsider her argument in light of new information is refreshing.

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