The Supreme Court soon will hear arguments about tax breaks for charities, school policies on LGBTQ material, Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, and Oklahoma’s proposed Catholic charter school. The high court also agreed to hear a case on gay conversion therapy, and rulings are expected soon on minors’ access to pornography and medical treatment for transgender people.
This on the heels of two other cases in which rulings are expected soon and the acceptance of one new case not yet scheduled.
It’s a busy season for the court, with numerous cases addressing issues of church and state, many of them brought by conservative Christian legal groups.
Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin
On Monday, March 31, justices will hear arguments in the case of Catholic Charities Bureau Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission. The case arises from Wisconsin’s determination that Catholic Charities should not be exempt from unemployment taxes because its charitable work is “primarily charitable and secular,” not religious.
Wisconsin denied the exemption, saying the work Catholic Charities performs does not involve religious proselytizing and does not exclusively serve or employ Catholics. Wisconsin acknowledged that while the charity work was motivated by religion, its results are secular.
Wisconsin denied the exemption, saying the work Catholic Charities performs does not involve religious proselytizing.
Other explicitly religious organizations, such as churches, may be exempt from unemployment taxes and their employees are not eligible for state unemployment benefits if terminated.
Prominent faith groups have objected to Wisconsin’s decision, with some questioning whether states should have the authority to determine whether a charity’s work qualifies as religious. Among the groups submitting amicus briefs supporting Catholic Charities are:
- National Association of Evangelicals
- Council for Christian Colleges and Universities
- Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability
- Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
- United Methodist Church and other denominations
- A number of Christian foundations (Fuller Foundation, Servant Foundation, Crowell Trust, Christian Community Foundation)
“The court should not permit this infringement” of the rights of faith groups, says one amicus brief. “They and their members will have to justify to a bureaucrat in Madison whether their school, hospital, pregnancy resource center or food bank gives out enough gospel tracts, sufficiently stridently recommends attendance at chapel services, or prays with and not just for their program participants.”
On the other hand, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union support Wisconsin, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation claims states must make fact-based inquiries of charities: “Catholic Charities’ proposed tests would allow all religiously affiliated organizations, including six of the 10 largest health systems in the U.S., to exempt themselves from unemployment insurance and numerous other government regulations.”
Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments April 2 in Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. This case concerns South Carolina’s decision to withhold Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, which offers nonabortion care across the country but has been targeted by anti-abortion groups for its better-known abortion services, since curtailed by the high court’s Dobbs decision.
“At two clinics in Charleston and Columbia, Planned Parenthood has tried to make it easier to lower-income patients, many of whom are covered by Medicaid, to use its services — by, for example, offering same-day appointments and extended clinic hours. One of those Medicaid patients is Julie Edwards, who suffers from diabetes. She went to Planned Parenthood for birth control but says she wants to return to receive other care in the future,” according to SCOTUS Blog.
“In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ordered the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to bar abortion clinics from participating in the Medicaid program. McMaster explained that the ‘payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life.’”
Edwards and Planned Parenthood sued the state, arguing anyone who is eligible for Medicaid may seek care from any “qualified” provider.
“Pro-family” groups led by the Family Policy Alliance argue in favor of the state’s restriction.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Parents in Montgomery County, Md., have sued the local public school board, saying it violates parental rights by eliminating the ability of children to opt out of lessons using LGBTQ-inclusive materials.
The court will hear arguments on April 22 in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. Dozens of evangelical groups oppose the decision to eliminate opt-outs.
“When parents send their children to school, they expect them to learn to read and write, to do math and science, to learn about history and art,” says a brief from “pro-family” groups, the Land Center for Cultural Engagement, Moms for Liberty and Tea Party Patriots Action. “They do not expect school administrators and teachers with an agenda to undermine their children’s basic understanding of reality.”
“They do not expect school administrators and teachers with an agenda to undermine their children’s basic understanding of reality.”
These groups generally deny the LGBTQ community as legitimate expressions of human sexuality.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists in a brief that argues Montgomery County schools are forcing students into “a novel program teaching young students LGBT-related topics from a viewpoint hostile to traditional religion.”
“The right of parents to transmit their religious faith to their own children is one of the ancient landmarks of our law,” the brief states. “Without that right, no religion can survive to the next generation. Yet Montgomery County has violated that right by pursuing a novel reading program that seeks to indoctrinate young children into the county’s viewpoint on sexuality and gender without accommodating objecting religious parents.”
This fear of indoctrination is the same motivation for library book bans in schools.
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond
One of the Court’s biggest church-state cases this term is Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. Amid much controversy, Oklahoma’s charter school board approved St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School, a Catholic school to receive taxpayer funding — the first such case for an explicitly religious charter school in the nation.
This case will be heard before the high court April 30.
The state’s attorney general sued, saying a tax-supported Catholic school would violate the state’s constitution, which says public schools should be “free from sectarian control.”
The state’s attorney general sued, saying a tax-supported Catholic school would violate the state’s constitution.
Numerous conservative evangelical groups support the Catholic public school, with Focus on the Family saying: “No parent should be forced to fund the increasingly woke propaganda that’s masquerading these days as age-appropriate public-school curriculum.”
The school board is being defended by Alliance Defending Freedom, the powerful conservative Christian legal group founded by James Dobson and other evangelical Christian leaders.
Education has become a divisive issue in Oklahoma, where Ryan Walters, the evangelical superintendent of public instruction, has ordered Bibles be placed in every public school classroom and has supported teaching students that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty is among those opposing St. Isidore and says the concept of a taxpayer-supported Catholic school is illegal.
Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton
The first of two cases already heard by the court and awaiting rulings is Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, which will determine the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring people who view online pornography to verify they are adults.
The law has the support of many conservative evangelical groups, including the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
The court heard oral arguments in this case Jan. 15, and justices appeared divided on how to rule. The case pits free speech against a stated intent to protect minors from exposure to online pornography. The fix advanced by Texas and several other states is to require any who accesses online pornography — as defined by the state — to register first and prove they are not minors.
Producers of sexual content argue this creates a barrier to their free speech rights because most adults who view their content do not want to register with the state to do so.
United States v. Skrmetti
Another case recently heard by the court, United States v. Skrmetti, will decide the legality of a Tennessee law restricting minors’ access to transgender medical treatments.
The root of the case is Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
Interestingly, conservative groups that typically argue for parental rights here argue against parental rights, saying the state should decide what’s best for children.
“Conservative groups that typically argue for parental rights here argue against parental rights.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center, which favors the conservative viewpoint, argues in its brief: “With stunning speed, gender ideology has permeated American culture, influencing medicine, business, media, government and education. The results are far-reaching, threatening religious liberty and parental rights, stifling free speech, and driving an unprecedented rise in youth ‘transgender’ identification. Gender ideology is sowing confusion and undermining personal well-being, creating an urgent need for clarity, education and compassionate guidance.”
In December arguments before the Supreme Court, three transgender teens, their families and a Memphis physician, joined by the Biden administration, said the Tennessee law violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. Tennessee countered that it is exercising its power to regulate the practice of medicine for all youth and is not distinguishing based on a patient’s sex.
After Donald Trump became president Jan. 20, his administration notified the Supreme Court it views this case differently than the Biden administration.
“The government’s previously stated views no longer represent the United States’ position,” wrote Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon.
This case will have significance far beyond Tennessee, as Republican legislatures in multiple states have passed laws or are considering laws that would ban or regulate medical treatment not only for transgender youth but for transgender adults.
Chiles v. Salazar
A new case recently accepted by the high court is Chiles v. Salazar, in which a Colorado Springs Christian counselor says Colorado’s ban on “gay conversion therapy” violates her freedom of speech and religion.
The largely discredited strategy of helping gay and lesbian people “pray away the gay” through practices that include inflicting pain and overdosing on pornography still has advocates — mainly within the evangelical church. Within the mental health community, conversion therapy has been dismissed for years as cruel and unproductive.
Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative evangelical legal advocacy group that previously won a Supreme Court case for a Colorado graphic designer who didn’t want to do design work for same-sex weddings.
The New Republic argues both cases were concocted specifically to gain legal victories from a supportive court, even though the plaintiffs suffered no injury: “The Supreme Court has an unfortunate habit in recent religious freedom disputes (or religious-adjacent free speech ones, as in this instance) of taking up cases with either underdeveloped records or nonexistent ones.”
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