It has been almost three years since the Supreme Court last heard the argument. It was a strange lull that one of the clauses of religion was one of the provisions of the first amendment, a court signature project led by Chief John G. Roberts Jr., strengthening the place of faith in public life.
The holidays are over. Over the course of this spring, the court hears three important religious cases. The first one asks whether Wisconsin Catholic charities should receive tax exemptions for discussion Monday. In April, the court will consider whether Oklahoma's Catholic Charter School is constitutional and whether parents who have religiously challenged the Maryland curriculum can withdraw their children from class.
Taken together, three cases test the limitations of the court's assertive vision for one of its distinctive commitments, religious freedom, for over a decade.
When the court unanimously ruled that religious groups were often exempt from the employment discrimination law in 2012, religious sides won all but one of 16 signed decisions in a controversial case regarding the prohibition of the establishment of religion's government and the ban on the First Amendment on the protection of the religious freedom movement.
“Since 2012, religious freedom has been winning consecutively in the Supreme Court,” said Eric Rasbach, a lawyer with the Beckett Fund for Religious Freedom, representing two of the three cases discussed this spring. “It's not yet on par with freedom of speech, but it's getting much closer.”
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction with the general trends in his remarks at the Catholic University's Columbus School of Law in September. He was asked to identify “some of the major themes of recent court religious liberty cases,” he said, “I recognized that in my view, we recognize the constitutional protection of religious equality and religious freedom,” and “We have made significant progress.”
Not everyone is happy with the general trends or where it is heading.
“The trio of religious cases this spring is nothing more than destroying the fundamental structure of American law and life,” Yale law professor Justin Driver added that the courts are steadily moving the protection of free movement to a central stage, while leaving religion on government entanglement to the wings. Professor Driver said the two educational cases are particularly difficult.
“This term could, as we have known over the past decades, destroy American public schools very plausibly,” he said. “Of course, many conservatives will see its destruction as a virtue rather than evil.”
There has been one exception to religious streaks over the past decade. The judge's refusal in 2018 was a challenge to the first Trump administration's ban on travel from several Muslim countries.
That's what it says, said Rachel Laser, president of American United, for the separation of church and nation. “The law was bent backwards to protect religious minorities,” she said. “Now, they are Christians, often conservative Christians, and are repeatedly supported by the Supreme Court decisions.”
The court has recently determined that state programs supporting private schools in Maine and Montana must allow parents to choose the benefits of religious and Christian schools. On April 30th, the court hears discussions about variations in that question, but will give an important twist.
The new case asks whether Oklahoma must pay religious charter schools, Sebil Catholic Virtual Schools, to use government money to devote its efforts to infusing Catholic education into the curriculum, run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
The school in the previous case was private. Under Oklahoma law, charter schools are open to the public.
“Allowing public schools, or directly funded schools, to become religious schools, would be a change in the ocean,” Laser said. “You're talking about your neighborhood school becoming Sunday School.”
Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond opposed religious charter schools, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court opposed it, violating the National Constitution's ban on the First Amendment and the public funding of the national constitution to support the religious system.
In an overview to the US Supreme Court, the school argued that it was something like that in the Maine and Montana cases.
Saint Isidor “want to provide another education.” option For Oklahomans, no student would be forced to attend St. Isidor,” Brief said.
Douglas Lacock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, is on the Oklahoma State Charter Board of Education v. Drummond, no. The incident on 24-394 stated that “it only comes down to most characteristics.”
“Is a charter school a public school with private management or a publicly funded private school?” he asked.
Judge Amy Connie Barrett rejected herself from the case but did not say why. She is a former professor of law at Notre Dame, whose religious freedom clinic represents the charter school and is a close friend of Nicole Garnett, a professor who supported St. Issidor.
Mahmoudv, the second case involving schools. Taylor, No. 24-297, which will be discussed on April 22nd, asks whether the Constitution gives parents of public school students the right to make excuses from discussions in picture book classrooms featuring LGBTQ characters and themes.
Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school system, featured its storybook in the fall of 2022. For most of that grade, school administrators notified parents when picture books were discussed and gave children the opportunity to make excuses from those sessions. However, in the spring of 2023, the school system announced that it would no longer give parents notifications or opt out of classes.
School system lawyers said it was difficult to manage requests for opt-out, leading to high student absences and isolated students who believe the book represents them.
Several parents, including Muslims and Roman Catholics, accused them of the new policies of straining their religious rights.
Michael McConnell, a law professor at Stanford University and a former federal court of appeals judge who submitted a summary in favour of his parents, said the curriculum is an attack on religious freedom.
“The fundamental question here is whether public schools should be used as a means of ideological persuasion,” he said. “These textbooks are meant to teach reading, and in my mind, I try to undermine the beliefs of my parents, rather than not choosing books to teach for reading based on literary or grammatical or other values.”
Professor Driver, who submitted simple support in favor of the school system, saw it differently. “Decisions that allow parents to make public school curriculum decisions will drop the American education system,” he said.
The third case, Catholic Charity Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Board, No. 24-154, Discussion will be made on Monday, Wisconsin asks if they are free to refuse tax exemptions against Catholic charities, mainly because their activities are not religious.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the charity “will not attempt to instill Catholic faith in program participants or supply religious material to program participants or employees,” but the job is not subject to exemption. Another strike against the charity did not restrict employment or its services based on religion, according to the court.
Contesting justice said the majority were wrong because they “answered theological questions far beyond the scope of justice.”
If history is a reliable guide, discussions from charter schools, charities and parents will receive a friendly reception in court.
With the addition of Chief John G. Roberts Jr. to the court in 2005, a 2021 study of religious judgments in the alleged cases found that the nature of the judgment had changed from that issued by a court led by Judge Earl Warren, Warren E. Berger and William H. Lenquist.
The study, conducted by Lee Epstein at Washington University in St. Louis and Eric Posner at the University of Chicago, found that the Roberts Court favors more than 83% of religious people and groups, compared to about 50% of other courts since 1953.
“In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, but in the past, religious outcomes have more frequently supported minority or marginal religious groups,” they write.
This study examined cases where the First Amendment religious provisions were turned on, but religion is also considered in other cases. For example, in 2023, the court unanimously ruled the support of postal workers who refused to tackle Sabbath under the Employment Discrimination Act. That same year, it split in favor of 6-3 for web designers who didn't want to create a site for same-sex weddings under the First Amendment Free Speech Clause.
The proportion of pro-religious rulings from the Roberts Court has risen to 86% since the survey was conducted, Professor Epstein found. If the court supports religious claims in all three pending cases, the fees will rise again, rising to 88%.
