July 29, 2025 - Epoch Times
11:04
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| In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled 9-0 in favor of a Catholic charity over in the state of Wisconsin. | |
| And by doing so, they have effectively expanded the rights of religious nonprofits across the whole country. | |
| Let's go through the details of this case, what this specific issue at play was, what the Supreme Court ruling actually said, as well as what it means for you and I, the people who don't necessarily live within the state of Wisconsin. | |
| And I will mention that whether you live in Wisconsin or not, you should take a quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that this video can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| Now, to start with, the organization at the center of this whole case is called the Catholic Charities Bureau. | |
| It's a nonprofit that functions as an arm of the Roman Catholic Diocese over in Superior, Wisconsin. | |
| And the Catholic Charities Bureau, as an organization, it provides almost exclusively social services. | |
| They run several different affiliated organizations that do different things. | |
| They help the elderly, they help the disabled, they give food to those in need, they provide shelter to the homeless, things like that. | |
| Now, very notably and very importantly to the story is the fact that these services are available to the general public. | |
| They're basically available to everyone, not just the Catholics. | |
| Also, the Catholic Charities Bureau doesn't really engage in traditional religious activities like worship, Bible study, prayer, trying to convert the participants in their programs to Catholicism or things like that. | |
| Their range of activities are exclusively secular. | |
| And it's that part that becomes relevant in a moment. | |
| Now, over in the state of Wisconsin, they have a state law which exempts religious organizations from having to pay into the state's unemployment insurance program. | |
| Or to be more technical, quote, Wisconsin law excuses religious organizations that are operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches from paying state unemployment tax. | |
| Now naturally, the Catholic Charities Bureau wanted to take advantage of that exemption. | |
| They applied for it, but they were rejected. | |
| You see, the state of Wisconsin determined that this particular organization was not religious enough to claim this tax exemption. | |
| The relevant state officials, they said that because the services that this charity provided, like food delivery, job training, child care, and everything else, because they were for the general public, not just for Catholics, and also very notably, because the services did not involve any religious teaching, then the whole enterprise did not actually qualify as a religious organization under the definition of the exemption guidelines. | |
| Essentially, the state determined that their work fell into the category of social and charitable work rather than religious worship and or religious teaching work, and therefore the tax had to be paid. | |
| Now, the Catholic Charities Bureau, they pushed back and they filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that, for one, their work was driven by their Catholic values and that serving others was a part of their religious mission. | |
| But then secondly, and more fundamentally, is that the Catholic Charities Bureau were arguing that this whole situation was a violation of their First Amendment rights, that the state government doesn't have the authority to determine how religious something is based on whether it quote unquote looks religious to them. | |
| Eventually, the case made it all the way up to the state Supreme Court of Wisconsin, who actually wound up ruling against the charity. | |
| Specifically, back in March of last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, they ruled, it was a split decision, four to three, and in that decision, they said that, quote, Catholic charities and its four related organizations that serve the developmentally disabled are not operated primarily for religious purposes, so they fail to meet the requirements for a tax exemption. | |
| In justifying their decision a bit further, the state Supreme Court, they said that the activities of the Catholic charities, they don't qualify as typical religious activities because, quote, the organization does not attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith and because the help it provides to those with mental and developmental disabilities could be carried out by secular organizations. | |
| However, the Catholic Charities Bureau, they appealed this decision all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who, after well over a year, finally ruled on the matter just last week. | |
| In that unanimous 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, they ruled that the state of Wisconsin had actually violated the First Amendment when they denied this tax exemption to this charity. | |
| Writing for the majority of the court, U.A. Justice Sonia Sodemeyer write the following, quote, 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 state 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. | |
| Then she went on further to specifically address the points that were raised by the state as well as the state Supreme Court, such as the fact that the work of the Catholic Charity Bureau didn't include overt religious activities. | |
| And as a response to that, she wrote the following, quote, This means that the state court held that the organization could only qualify for the tax exemption if, when providing charitable services, it engaged in proselytizing or limited their services to fellow Catholics. | |
| The organization's Catholic faith prevents it from using charity to proselytize, while many other religious organizations take a different approach. | |
| This means that Wisconsin's law on tax exemptions expresses a preference for some religious denominations over others based on theological choices. | |
| Because the Wisconsin law distinguishes among religions on the basis of theological distinctions, it imposed a denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny. | |
| Because Wisconsin had transgressed that principle without the tailoring necessary to survive such scrutiny, the lower court's decision must be overturned. | |
| And therefore, she wrote, the earlier ruling from the state Supreme Court was overturned and the case was remanded, meaning was sent back down to that court for quote, further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. | |
| Now, for their part, as you would imagine, the attorney who was actually representing the Catholic charities hailed this ruling as a win for religious freedom, saying the following to us here at the Epoch Times when we reached out to him for comment. | |
| Quote, 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 that the government favors. | |
| And just for the record, we also did reach out to the Department of Justice for Wisconsin State. | |
| We asked them for their comment on this ruling as well, but they have never gotten back to us. | |
| If they do, I'll leave their comment down in the description box below. | |
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| Regardless, though, moving forward, what this ruling means is that state governments now, moving forward, have less power to determine whether an organization qualifies as being sufficiently religious. | |
| And as I mentioned at the very top of today's episode, this naturally doesn't only apply to the state of Wisconsin. | |
| In fact, Justice Sonia Sodemeyer in her U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion ruling, she wrote the following regarding how many states have this sort of exemption on the books. | |
| Quote, Wisconsin is not the only jurisdiction that exempts religious organizations from paying taxes to cover unemployment compensation programs. | |
| Since Congress in 1970 approved the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, which contains language similar to that found in the Wisconsin law, more than 40 states have adopted similarly worded tax exemptions. | |
| And so because this ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court naturally covers the entirety of the nation, it means that if you start a religious organization somewhere in America, in any one of those 40 out of 50 states, and attempt to get an exemption from paying into that unemployment tax or any other tax that is covered by such a law, your government has significantly less ability to judge whether or not your organization qualifies as being quote unquote sufficiently religious. | |
| Which is, you can say, a fascinating concept because this particular case, it really touches on how religion is physically expressed, not just through worship, but also through service to others. | |
| People might want to express their religious convictions by setting up an organization to help others, even if that help is purely secular. | |
| And the U.S. Supreme Court has now just ruled that when the state government tries to define what real religious work actually looks like, they're crossing a line. | |
| So your secular work might fully qualify as religious work if you're doing it based on your religious convictions. | |
| And this case has the potential to affect a lot of organizations across the whole country. | |
| Places like different Catholic hospitals, different Baptist hospitals, Jewish family centers, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, among many, many others. | |
| These are all historically religious organizations that now serve the general public in almost exclusively secular ways. | |
| It'd be interesting to see whether any one of them will use this new Supreme Court precedent to try and get around paying into the unemployment program. | |
| And so there you have it. | |
| If you'd like to read the entirety of this new Supreme Court decision, I will throw a link to the PDF version of it. | |
| You'll be able to find it down in the description box below, which is as always that same description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash. | |
| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epic Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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