For US businesses, there are pressing issues that demand fast answers, starting with: What will this mean for employees' health care coverage? Meanwhile, some executives are waiting for the other shoe to drop
Abortion-rights demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court after Roe v. Wade was overturned, in Washington, June 24, 2022. Reeling from competing demands from stakeholders, including activists, clients, consumers, shareholders and elected officials, businesses are increasingly caught in the middle of the country’s bruising culture wars. (Shuran Huang/The New York Times)
Friday’s Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade sent business leaders and employees across the nation scrambling for answers about how to react, what to say — or what not to say — and the immediate practical implications of the ruling.
For U.S. businesses, there are pressing issues that demand fast answers, starting with: What will this mean for employees’ health care coverage? “I guarantee you that there are teams of lawyers trying to figure this out right now,” said Tom Baker, an insurance law expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school.
Businesses have already been battered in political and social fights in recent years and are reeling from competing demands from stakeholders — including activists, clients, consumers, shareholders and elected officials — about how to respond to the country’s bruising culture wars.
Some executives are already starting to focus on the potential for other shoes to drop: Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion raised questions about what other rights could soon disappear. The rationale that the Supreme Court used to declare that there is no right to abortion, he argued, should also be used to overturn cases establishing rights to contraception, consensual same-sex relations and same-sex marriage.
Local officials in states that restrict abortion are already threatening to punish businesses that help employees gain access to it elsewhere; activists who support abortion rights are calling on businesses to cut campaign donations to officials who oppose abortion.
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