The Freedom From Religion Foundation strongly condemns today’s unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision exempting a group of Catholic-affiliated nonprofits from the Wisconsin unemployment insurance program. The ruling could have devastating consequences for workers nationwide and further provide government preference to religious groups.
“This decision is fundamentally wrong,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Treating religiously affiliated nonprofits the same as all other nonprofits is not a violation of the First Amendment.”
Catholic Charities and four subsidiary nonprofits that provide secular services but are affiliated with the Catholic Diocese of Superior sought an exemption from the unemployment insurance program. They argued that they should be allowed to take advantage of a church exemption to state-mandated unemployment insurance simply because their parent entity created them as part of its religious mission. Yet, the organizations provide secular services, do not require their employees or clients to be Catholic, and do not ask employees to minister to clients. By accepting this specious rationale, the court has done great damage to the social safety net.
The unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, overturns the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision and finds that it violated the First Amendment by showing “state-sponsored denominational preference” against Catholic Charities. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Wisconsin court failed to apply the state’s religious unemployment exemption in a neutral manner.
During oral arguments, the justices focused heavily on hypotheticals, suggesting that Catholic Charities might have qualified for the exemption if its subsidiaries had explicitly proselytized. According to the court, such distinctions based on “theological practices,” such as whether the groups proselytize, amounts to unconstitutional favoritism toward certain sects. While the ruling is arguably narrow in scope, it is nonetheless troubling and marks yet another erosion in the constitutional wall separating state and church.
FFRF filed a friend-of-the-court brief contending that expanding a narrow church exemption to include all entities with religious motivations behind their work is unfounded. It pointed out that if the nation’s highest court overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision, it could have harmful consequences for workers all over the country. Hundreds of thousands of employees, including those at Catholic-affiliated hospitals, could potentially lose the benefit of unemployment insurance.
Sotomayor’s opinion includes broader Establishment Clause themes, which are consistent with a proper interpretation of the First Amendment. Quoting prior precedent, the opinion says the “clearest command of the Establishment Clause” is that the government may not officially prefer one religious denomination. The opinion reiterates, “Government actions that favor certain religions, the court has warned, convey to members of other faiths that ‘they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.’”
However, the opinion stretches the neutrality principles of the First Amendment in this case. The opinion says, “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.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s opinion had maintained neutrality by taking a common sense approach to deciding whether a religiously affiliated nonprofit’s activities are religious or secular. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion signals that it has accepted a religious organization’s claims about its work no matter what, even if that work is clearly nonreligious.
As FFRF stressed in its amicus brief, the court’s decision could allow religiously affiliated organizations, including over half of the 10 largest Catholic health systems in the United States, to potentially claim exemptions from unemployment insurance and countless other government regulations.
“This ruling is a dramatic expansion of religious exemptions that invites confusion, litigation and further erosion of state/church separation,” says FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the largest national association of freethinkers, representing atheists, agnostics, and others who form their opinions about religion based on reason, rather than faith, tradition, or authority. As a secular organization that promotes the separation of state and church as envisioned by the Constitution’s Framers, FFRF offers a unique viewpoint on the socioeconomic dangers that arise when the government grants preferential treatment to religious organizations.
