EXCLUSIVE: Legal institute celebrates SCOTUS decision, declares 'religious liberty is alive and well'
EXCLUSIVE: A legal organization whose mission it is to defend the religious liberty of Americans has called the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling in favor of the Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) "a huge moment for religious liberty in America," and a clear rejection of government overreach into religious life.
"This was not a hard call," Tiffany Dunkin, a legal fellow and attorney with the First Liberty Institute, emphasized in an interview with Fox News Digital, citing Thursday's unanimous SCOTUS decision to strike down Wisconsin's attempt to withhold a religious tax exemption because the CCB does not proselytize or serve only Catholics.
"What Wisconsin was doing… they were saying that the Catholic Charities was not a religious institution because they did not proselytize or serve people of their own faith," Dunkin explained.
"What they were doing was deciding what it means to be religious," she added. "And the First Amendment prohibits the government from doing that."
The case, Catholic Charities Bureau Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission, questioned whether faith-based nonprofits that provide public services are "religious enough" to receive the same benefits as churches or houses of worship.
Catholic Charities, affiliated with the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, provides critical care services for people with disabilities and mental health needs. Wisconsin argued those acts were not "primarily religious."
The Supreme Court disagreed.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the opinion for the court, stated clearly that the government has no authority to assess or rank the religious nature of charitable work.
Dunkin said the consequences of the ruling go far beyond Wisconsin.
"This is actually a pretty ongoing problem across the country," she noted.
"It's not just Wisconsin. First Liberty Institute represents Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio… they're saying that because you're running a 24-7 homeless shelter, you're not [religious]."
Other clients of Plano, Texas-based First Liberty in Colorado and Arizona have faced similar arguments from local governments, which question whether providing food, clothing or shelter to those in need is inherently religious.
"Even though there are churches doing this kind of work, the governments are saying, 'Well, you're not religious enough,'" Dunkin said.
The court's language in the ruling, Dunkin pointed out, "affirms what the Supreme Court has said for nearly a century," that the government cannot choose which expressions of faith are valid.
"This sends a great message to people of all religions and all charitable organizations," she said. "The government… cannot intrude into telling you exactly what you can and can't do, whether you're religious or not religious, in order to receive a government benefit or participate in society."
Had SCOTUS ruled the other way, Dunkin warned, it would have "grave implications" for religious charities and ministries nationwide.
"It would allow the government to step into the religious doctrine of all faiths more than our Founding Fathers ever intended," she said. "The government cannot step in and get involved in deciding and picking and choosing between one type of religious activity and another."
When asked what this means for churches and ministries on the ground, Dunkin's answer was clear: "They should feel emboldened to continue to do what they feel called to do by their religious faith… especially in a charitable sense."
And for those who may see this as a one-off legal win? Not so fast.
"I see this really as two different things," she said. "One, an affirmance of what the First Amendment has always stood for… but of course, going forward, we do hope and we're encouraged that religious liberty in America is alive and well. And of course, First Liberty Institute is here to continue to fight for that."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
30 minutes ago
- CNN
How a Supreme Court decision backing the NRA is thwarting Trump's retribution campaign
As Harvard University, elite law firms and perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump fight back against his efforts to use government power to punish them, they're winning thanks in part to the National Rifle Association. Last May, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the gun rights group in a First Amendment case concerning a New York official's alleged efforts to pressure insurance companies in the state to sever ties with the group following the deadly 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. A government official, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the nine, 'cannot … use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.' A year later, the court's decision in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo has been cited repeatedly by federal judges in rulings striking down a series of executive orders that targeted law firms. Lawyers representing Harvard, faculty at Columbia University and others are also leaning on the decision in cases challenging Trump's attacks on them. 'Going into court with a decision that is freshly minted, that clearly reflects the unanimous views of the currently sitting Supreme Court justices, is a very powerful tool,' said Eugene Volokh, a conservative First Amendment expert who represented the NRA in the 2024 case. For free speech advocates, the application of the NRA decision in cases pushing back against Trump's retribution campaign is a welcome sign that lower courts are applying key First Amendment principles equally, particularly in politically fraught disputes. In the NRA case, the group claimed that Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, had threatened enforcement actions against the insurance firms if they failed to comply with her demands to help with the campaign against gun groups. The NRA's claims centered around a meeting Vullo had with an insurance market in 2018 in which the group says she offered to not prosecute other violations as long as the company helped with her campaign. 'The great hope of a principled application of the First Amendment is that it protects everybody,' said Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute. 'Some people have criticized free speech advocates as being naive for hoping that'll be the case, but hopefully that's what we're seeing now,' he added. 'We're seeing courts apply that principle where the politics are very different than the NRA case.' The impact of Vullo can be seen most clearly in the cases challenging Trump's attempts to use executive power to exact revenge on law firms that have employed his perceived political enemies or represented clients who have challenged his initiatives. A central pillar of Trump's retribution crusade has been to pressure firms to bend to his political will, including through issuing executive orders targeting four major law firms: Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey. Among other things, the orders denied the firms' attorneys access to federal buildings, retaliated against their clients with government contracts and suspended security clearances for lawyers at the firms. (Other firms were hit with similar executive orders but they haven't taken Trump to court over them.) The organizations individually sued the administration over the orders and the three judges overseeing the Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block suits have all issued rulings permanently blocking enforcement of the edicts. (The Susman case is still pending.) Across more than 200-pages of writing, the judges – all sitting at the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC – cited Vullo 30 times to conclude that the orders were unconstitutional because they sought to punish the firms over their legal work. The judges all lifted Sotomayor's line about using 'the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,' while also seizing on other language in her opinion to buttress their own decisions. Two of them – US district judges Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Richard Leon, who was named to the bench by former President George W. Bush – incorporated Sotomayor's statement that government discrimination based on a speaker's viewpoint 'is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.' The third judge, John Bates, said Vullo and an earlier Supreme Court case dealing with impermissible government coercion 'govern – and defeat' the administration's arguments in defense of a section of the Jenner & Block order that sought to end all contractual relationships that might have allowed taxpayer dollars to flow to the firm. 'Executive Order 14246 does precisely what the Supreme Court said just last year is forbidden: it engages in 'coercion against a third party to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,'' wrote Bates, who was also appointed by Bush, in his May 23 ruling. For its part, the Justice Department has tried to draw a distinction between what the executive orders called for and the conduct rejected by the high court in Vullo. They told the three judges in written arguments that the orders at issue did not carry the 'force of the powers exhibited in Vullo' by the New York official. Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the rulings underscore how 'Vullo has proved its utility almost immediately.' 'It is extremely useful to remind judges and government actors alike that just last year, the court warned against the kind of shakedowns and turns of the screw that we're now seeing from the administration,' he said. Justice Department lawyers have not yet appealed any of the three rulings issued last month. CNN has reached out to the department for comment. In separate cases brought in the DC courthouse and elsewhere, Trump's foes have leaned on Vullo as they've pressed judges to intervene in high-stakes disputes with the president. Among them is Mark Zaid, a prominent national security lawyer who has drawn Trump's ire for his representation of whistleblowers. Earlier this year, Trump yanked Zaid's security clearance, a decision, the attorney said in a lawsuit, that undermines his ability to 'zealously advocate on (his clients') behalf in the national security arena.' In court papers, Zaid's attorneys argued that the president's decision was a 'retaliatory directive,' invoking language from the Vullo decision to argue that the move violated his First Amendment rights. ''Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,'' they wrote, quoting from the 2024 ruling. 'And yet that is exactly what Defendants do here.' Timothy Zick, a constitutional law professor at William & Mary Law School, said the executive orders targeting private entities or individuals 'have relied heavily on pressure, intimidation, and the threat of adverse action to punish or suppress speakers' views and discourage others from engaging with regulated targets.' 'The unanimous holding in Vullo is tailor-made for litigants seeking to push back against the administration's coercive strategy,' Zick added. That notion was not lost on lawyers representing Harvard and faculty at Columbia University in several cases challenging Trump's attacks on the elite schools, including one brought by Harvard challenging Trump's efforts to ban the school from hosting international students. A federal judge has so far halted those efforts. In a separate case brought by Harvard over the administration's decision to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's oldest university, the school's attorneys on Monday told a judge that Trump's decision to target it because of 'alleged antisemitism and ideological bias at Harvard' clearly ran afoul of the high court's decision last year. 'Although any governmental retaliation based on protected speech is an affront to the First Amendment, the retaliation here was especially unconstitutional because it was based on Harvard's 'particular views' – the balance of speech on its campus and its refusal to accede to the Government's unlawful demands,' the attorneys wrote.
Bloomberg
36 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
We Now Know the Meaning of 'Religious Enough'
Back in 1959, the chief administrative officer of the United Presbyterian Church warned that churches wielded too much 'economic power' due to their tax-exempt status. Unless religious groups were taxed like everyone else, the nation might soon face 'revolutionary expropriations of church property.' Well, the revolution hasn't yet come for the churches. But regulatory creep has nevertheless nibbled at the margins of religious freedom, with states finding one activity or another to deem not truly religious and therefore subject to tax.
Bloomberg
39 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Changing the Rules of the Game with China and With Those Pesky Lawyers
Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, bringing you stories of capitalism about things you need to know, but even more things you need to think about. I'm David Westin, and this week we held a roundtable discussion with Larry Summers of Harvard and Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution about the future of China and explored the developing world of investing in law firms. If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter. President Donald Trump held his long-awaited phone call with President Xi Jinping of China this week, trying to find a way forward for the relationship between their two countries. Though things may be moving forward, there is a long way to go to address what the president says is "hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China.' US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says "we have a plan, we have a process," and that "over the next 90 days we can accomplish a lot."
