The ACA’s requirement that the companies provide a full palette of insurance benefits is simply a general regulation of economic activity. And, operating under the old paradigm, I would find it handily constitutional. I don’t say that because I scorn the Green family’s faith. I have no doubt their concerns are genuine and heartfelt. But those concerns are not the only interests at stake.

To begin with, there is, of course, the federal government’s power over commerce, guaranteed in sweeping terms by Article I, § 8 cl. 3. That’s a central part of the constitutional design, and allowing people to opt out of it for religious reasons can make congressional programs like the ACA unworkable. (The Supreme Court recognized as much in cases that refused to allow an Amish farmer and a Native American family a free-exercise right to opt out of Social Security.)

Congressional power by itself might not be enough to overcome the Greens’ scruples. But let’s factor in something else: the religious, and economic, rights of their employees. Those ought to count too.

The coverage provisions of the ACA were enacted specifically to protect employees by making sure they receive full health-care insurance coverage. Many of those employees do not share Hobby Lobby’s religious beliefs. Some may have medical need of these drugs, and may have no religious objection to using contraception. In fact, for some of them, the use of contraception may itself be a question of “free exercise”—of giving practical expression in daily living to their religious beliefs. I know many people of faith who consider a woman’s reproductive rights to have spiritual significance. For those reasons, denying employees coverage is a burden on them; that burden should be weighed against the burden on the Greens.

But I have little confidence that it will be. To understand why, let’s look back at a case argued in November—Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall. This case was pushed hard by anti-union and libertarian groups, excited by the chance to gut statutory protections of union organizing that have been in place since the 1930s.

Unite Here concerned a union that wanted to conduct an organizing drive. Before it began, it reached an agreement with the management: The union would not picket or call for boycotts, and it would actively support a referendum that the company supported. The management would not actively try to discourage employees from signing up as members and would provide information like the names and addresses of employees. It’s a fairly common arrangement in labor relations—one of the purposes of federal labor law is to prevent the disruption and hard feelings that come from bitter organizing disputes, wildcat strikes, secondary boycotts, and so on.

But in the new language of rights, the agreement here was a “bribe” to the union, forbidden by federal statutes that bar businesses from giving unions any “thing of value.” The theory behind these laws is that corrupt unions might extort money payments from management to pull back on organizing drives. But this Court has a more sweeping view of “thing of value”—an agreement to cooperate, the justices seemed to think, was itself a payment. “But can we talk just about property just for a minute, just in the abstract?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked the union’s lawyer. “Isn't it true that what you have might become property when you trade it?”