Supreme Court to decide if Catholic charity qualifies for religious exemption
Case involves Wisconsin decision finding help for needy was secular in nature
The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted the first case in its current term that relates to constitutional protections for religion.
At issue is whether the charitable arm of a Catholic diocese in Wisconsin is exempt from contributing to the state’s unemployment compensation fund. The Catholic Charities Bureau and client agencies are claiming the exemption under a state law regarding organizations that are “operated primarily for religious purposes.” The case is an appeal from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which decided 4-3 earlier this year that the charitable work, which includes providing job training for the disabled, was primarily secular rather than religious in nature.
Catholic Charities has been paying into the state joblessness fund since 1972. If it wins its appeal, the organization would pay into an unemployment compensation fund operated by the Catholic Church.
The case is Catholic Charities Bureau v. State of Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission. The Supreme Court will most likely hear oral arguments in the case next spring and issue its ruling in early summer. The high court accepted the case without comment and did not indicate how many justices wanted to hear the case.
Nearly all states provide similar exemptions for religious organizations. There is no challenge here to the longstanding practice of granting such exemptions to organizations providing indisputably religious activities such holding worship services or providing religious education. What makes this case different, at least according to the majority opinion of the Wisconsin Superior Court, is that the charitable effort here is not religious in nature even if the motivations are religious.
According to the Wisconsin majority opinion:
CCB’s [referring to the Catholic Charities Bureau] and the sub-entities’ activities are primarily charitable and secular. The sub-entities provide services to individuals with developmental and mental health disabilities. These activities include job training, placement, and coaching, as well as services related to activities of daily living. CCB provides background support and management services for these activities — a wholly secular endeavor.
Such services can be provided by organizations of either religious or secular motivations, and the services provided would not differ in any sense.
The court suggested that the Catholic agency’s efforts could be religious in nature if they included proselytizing or were limited to Catholics.
The Catholics’ argument
But the Catholic Church argues that providing charitable support to the needy is an essential tenet of the Catholic faith and therefore inherently religious. In its legal documents asking the Supreme Court to consider reversing the Wisconsin court, Catholic Charities said:
This command to care for the most vulnerable is at the core of the Catholic Church. It’s inherently religious in that it expresses the love that binds Catholics to Christ, to each other, and to all those they encounter. Work undertaken to fulfill that command, therefore, can’t be likened to some secular social service. As Pope Francis has explained, “Charity is always the high road of the journey of faith, of the perfection of faith.”
The church also suggested it is unwilling to seek to convert the recipients of aid to Catholicism in order to meet legal requirements for being religious. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, the legal document said:
Accordingly, those “who practice charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the Church’s faith upon others,” because a “Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak.”
Support and opposition
Catholic Charities has received broad support from religious organizations. Among the organizations that formally asked the Supreme Court to accept the appeal were The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and the Sikh Commission. The Wisconsin Legislature also supported the appeal.
The most vocal opposition to the Catholics’ position so far has come from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Sam Grover, senior counsel for the FFRF, warned in a press statement that a decision in favor of Catholic Charities could threaten the unemployment compensation of workers at even secular charities.
Grover also criticized the Supreme Court for accepting the case. “The high court’s decision to take this case is alarming, and reveals its activist agenda,” he said.