The Supreme Court on Monday seemed ready to rule that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin was entitled to a tax exemption that had been denied by a state court on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court had ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and that it did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith.” For those reasons, the state court found the group should be denied the exemption even as it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.”
Those distinctions troubled justices across the ideological spectrum.
“Some religions proselytize,” Justice Elena Kagan said Monday. “Other religions don’t. Why are we treating some religions better than others based on that element of religious doctrine?”
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch echoed the point. “Isn’t it a fundamental premise of our First Amendment that the state shouldn’t be picking and choosing between religions,” he said. He added, “Doesn’t it entangle the state tremendously when it has to go into a soup kitchen, send an inspector in, to see how much prayer is going on?”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked a lawyer for the state what the charity would have to do to, at a minimum, to qualify for the exemption.
The lawyer, Colin T. Roth, said one possibility was saying the Lord’s Prayer when the charity provides soup.
That answer did not appear to satisfy many of the justices.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that some religions do not proselytize. “As I understand it,” she said, “Judaism does not have that as part of its religion. So does that mean that Judaism is completely disqualified from getting the exemption when they’re running these sorts of organizations?”
Mr. Roth said it would suffice for the charity to engage in worship or religious education.
The case was the first of three religion cases to be heard by the court in the space of a month. Judging by the justices’ questions, it may turn out to be the easiest of the three.
The Supreme Court, which has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, will hear arguments in April on whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma passes constitutional muster and then another case about whether parents in Maryland have a religious right to withdraw their children from classes including sexual themes.
The case argued Monday, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, No. 24-154, concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”
In an interview, Alan Rock, the executive director of Catholic Charities Bureau, said that the group’s work was closely tied to the social ministry of the Catholic Church by providing services to the poor in rural Wisconsin. “We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers,” he said.
But state officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed, adding that it was also a strike against the charity that it employed and served people of all religions.
Mr. Roth, the lawyer for the state, acknowledged that the charity would qualify for the exemption if it were part of the church rather than a separate corporation. But he said there must be principles that separate religious institutions from others.
A ruling for the charity, he said, “would leave potentially over one million employees nationwide without unemployment coverage, like nurses and janitors at religiously affiliated hospitals.”
Justice Barrett said the case posed profound questions.
“If we had to articulate a test to distinguish religion from nonreligion,” she asked a lawyer for the charity, “can you concisely tell me what that test would say?”
The lawyer, Eric C. Rassbach, responded that “the overall thing is that there’s something transcendent or supernatural that you are feeling obligated by.”
But a majority of the justices seemed inclined to treat the central question in the case as simple and straightforward.
“There’s no dispute that Catholic Charities exist primarily for religious purposes,” Justice Gorsuch said. “There’s no dispute about the sincerity of their religious belief.”
