The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with a Catholic charity that was denied a tax exemption after the state of Wisconsin arbitrarily decided the group is "secular in nature" and therefore not eligible.
The ruling is a significant victory for Catholic Charities Bureau, which has spent years waging a legal battle to vindicate its religious rights.
Wisconsin allows groups that operate "primarily for a religious purpose" to obtain an exemption from state unemployment taxes. The Catholic Charities Bureau, which is the charitable arm of the local Catholic diocese in Superior, Wisconsin, sought the benefit in 2016 but was denied.
The Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling declared Wisconsin's denial of tax-exempt status "textbook denominational discrimination" that violates the First Amendment's requirement of religious neutrality.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court had previously ruled that Catholic Charities is not a religious group because it does not try to convert people and does not limit its services to Catholics only.
As the court put it, Catholic Charities makes no "attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”
The Catholic Church distinguishes between forcible conversion or proselytism, which it discourages, and evangelization - that is, attracting people to the faith through acts of love.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Catholic Charities, argued that "showing Christ's love" for the poor and hungry is an innately religious activity.
By ruling the group "secular in nature," the Wisconsin Supreme Court improperly discriminated on the basis of theology, the Supreme Court held unanimously. The ruling was an easy one for the justices to make, Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
“There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one,” Sotomayor wrote for the court.
“When the government distinguishes among religions based on theological differences in their provision of services, it imposes a denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny,” she continued.
Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty, celebrated the Supreme Court for rejecting the "ludicrous" claim that a Catholic charity is not religious in nature.
"This was a ludicrous claim, and the Court has rightly reversed. The Court has unanimously affirmed that the government cannot discriminate against our ministries simply because they do not conform to the government’s narrow idea of religion. I am grateful the Court has recognized that basic principle here," he said.
Eric Rassbach, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said, "It was always absurd to claim that Catholic Charities wasn’t religious because it helps everyone, no matter their religion...The Court resoundingly reaffirmed a fundamental truth of our constitutional order: the First Amendment protects all religious beliefs, not just those the government favors.”
