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In a huge affirmation of religious liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government doesn’t get to tell religious entities “whether to ‘express and inculcate religious doctrine’ through worship, proselytization, or religious education when performing charitable work.”
Last week the Supreme Court ruled in a 9–0 decision that Wisconsin had violated the First Amendment rights of the Catholic Charities Bureau by denying it an exemption to the state’s unemployment tax — solely because it did not proselytize or serve only Catholics.
The dispute began in 2016 when Catholic Charities and four of its sub-entities applied for an exemption to the state’s unemployment compensation tax and were denied. Wisconsin law allows exemptions to religious organizations that are “operated primarily for religious purposes” and “operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches.”
The Bureau is controlled by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Superior, and the bishop serves as president of the Bureau and appoints its membership.
After several years of litigation, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling which found that Catholic Charities was not “operated primarily for religious purposes” because its charitable services are “neither inherently or primarily religious activities.”
The state court argued that to determine whether an organization is operated primarily for religious purposes, the court had to examine the organization’s motives and its activities. The court concluded that courts should “focus on whether an organization participated in worship service, religious outreach, ceremonies, or religious education.”
The court decided that Catholic Charities and its sub-entities are not religious but secular in nature because they “neither attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”
They argued, “Both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion,” and the charity provided by the sub-entities could be “provided by organizations of either religious or secular motivations.”
Catholic Charities adheres to a religious doctrine prohibiting Catholic bodies from misusing its charitable works for purposes of proselytism. They argue that Catholic teachings distinguish between evangelism, which it says is “sharing one’s faith” and proselytism, which it says involves influencing or coercing others into accepting a religious belief.
It permits evangelism, but not proselytism.
Catholic Charities appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which last week issued a unanimous decision overturning the ruling.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the opinion for the Court, writing:
“The First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religions and subjects any state-sponsored denominational preference to strict scrutiny. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s application of [the Wisconsin statute] imposed a denominational preference by differentiating between religions based on theological lines. Because the law’s application does not survive strict scrutiny, it cannot stand.”
Strict scrutiny is the highest form of review used by courts and requires that a law be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.
Sotomayor summed up the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s rationale as follows:
“Put simply, petitioners could qualify for the exemption while providing their current charitable services if they engaged in proselytization or limited their services to fellow Catholics.…. Decisions about whether to ‘express and inculcate religious doctrine’ through worship, proselytization, or religious education when performing charitable work are, again, fundamentally theological choices driven by the content of different religious doctrines. A statute that excludes religious organizations from an accommodation on such grounds facially favors some denominations over others.”
Sotomayor concluded the opinion by stating,
“It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion.’ There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one.”
Bishop James Powers, the Bishop of the Diocese of Superior, said, “At the heart of Catholic Charities’ ministry is Christ’s call to care for the least of our brothers and sisters, without condition and without exception.”
He added that the Diocese was “grateful” the Court “unanimously recognized that improving the human condition by serving the poor is part of our religious exercise and has allowed us to continue serving those in need throughout our diocese and beyond.”
Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket Law, which represented the Bureau, said,
“It was always absurd to claim that Catholic Charities wasn’t religious because it helps everyone, no matter their religion. Today, the Court resoundingly reaffirmed a fundamental truth of our constitutional order: the First Amendment protects all religious beliefs, not just those the government favors.”
What the Wisconsin tax agency and the courts had effectively decided with their rulings was that if Catholic Charities was willing to provide charity to anyone, no matter their beliefs, and if it didn’t then try to convert those non-believers into becoming Catholic, then it wasn’t really a faith-based organization.
That’s a pretty insane take, but it illustrates exactly why government agencies and courts aren’t qualified to wade into doctrinal disputes or to try to tell churches how to run their business.
The bottom line is that the government went well outside its constitutional boundaries of its authority and interests in this case.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Wisconsin Supreme Court violated the church autonomy doctrine, which says that religious institutions have the right to define their own governance structures, not a state agency or a bureaucrat. They did this by separating the Catholic Charities Bureau from the Diocese and labeling it as secular — despite the bishop’s clear direction that the Bureau is an arm of the Diocese.
While Thomas’s opinion primarily focuses on the governance and the organization of religious institutions, it is also informative for other matters.
It is established principle that religious institutions must have the right to determine who their pastors or priests will be, what teachings they profess, and in most cases what employees they hire.
This can be seen in the concept of the ministerial exception, which allows churches or religious organizations to discriminate in hiring and firing practices based on whether a person adheres to the organization’s religious beliefs. Yet far too often legislators and courts seek to interfere with who a religious institution or organization hires or fires, particularly in the case of LGBT individuals.
The state is not permitted to determine what is orthodox for churches, and it shouldn’t be allowed to do it for religious organizations either.
In this case, the courts either misunderstood or ignored the structure of the Catholic Church. When they said that Catholic Charities is not operated primarily for religious purposes, they sought to make rulings on what is or is not orthodox religious practice for the Catholic Church.
Catholic Charities clearly performs its charitable services in order to follow both the actions and teachings of Christ, who was compassionate to even non-believers and commanded His followers to care for the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the vulnerable (Matthew 25:40-45).
Thankfully, the Supreme Court understood that theological matters are for religious groups to determine, not courts.
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