Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Supreme Court Rules Wisconsin Violated Catholic Org’s First Amendment Rights

Flickr/Tony Webster

The Supreme Court unanimously sided Thursday with Catholic Charities, holding Wisconsin’s denial of a religious tax exemption violates the First Amendment.

The justices reversed a Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion that found the Catholic Charities Bureau, an arm of the Diocese of Superior in Wisconsin, did not qualify for the state’s employment tax exemption because it was not “operated primarily for religious purposes.”

“It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion,'” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the unanimous ruling. “There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one. 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.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion to add that the Wisconsin Supreme Court violated the “church autonomy doctrine” by assuming a separation between Catholic Charities and the Diocese of Superior.

“Catholic Charities and its subentities are, from a religious perspective, a mere arm of the Diocese of Superior,” he wrote. “The Wisconsin Supreme Court should have deferred to that understanding, and its failure to do so amounted to an unlawful attempt by the State to redefine the Diocese’s internal governance.”

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Vice President and Senior Counsel Eric Rassbach, who argued the case before the justices in March, said that “Wisconsin shouldn’t have picked this fight in the first place.”

“It was always absurd to claim that Catholic Charities wasn’t religious because it helps everyone, no matter their religion,” Rassbach said in a statement. “Today, the

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.