a day ago
Americans are divided over religious freedom. The Supreme Court? Not as much
Thursday was a surprising day at the Supreme Court, and a religion case was part of the action.
The justices released six unanimous or near-unanimous decisions, including in a closely watched battle over the scope of faith-based tax breaks.
In that religion case, the full court agreed that Wisconsin officials were unlawfully privileging certain religious nonprofits over others by basing access to religious exemptions on how they expressed their beliefs.
Organizations that served only members of their own religion or that openly evangelized were typically eligible for the tax break, while organizations that served all comers with no strings attached often were deemed not religious enough to qualify.
'It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion.' There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the Supreme Court's opinion, which reversed a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling against a group of Catholic nonprofits.
The decision is significant, since it could lead to changes to religious exemptions nationwide.
But the fact that it was unanimous isn't as surprising as it may, at first, have appeared.
If there's a case to be made that the Supreme Court's ruling was unexpected, it centers on the role religious freedom advocates played in the battle.
Faith-related groups did not speak with one voice on how the justices should interpret the First Amendment. They put together competing legal briefs and press releases.
More liberal organizations and individuals supported Wisconsin's narrow religious exemption, arguing that an overly broad tax break would harm workers, including people of faith.
More conservative groups, on the other hand, said religious freedom law requires broad exemptions, which enable faith-based organizations to operate according to their beliefs.
While these arguments were specific to the Supreme Court case on Catholic nonprofits, they should be familiar to anyone who follows faith-related policy debates.
Religious groups and faith-related advocacy organizations no longer agree on what religious freedom means — nor on whether or not conservative Christians, in particular, are demanding too many concessions in the public square.
Those disagreements help explain why different religious freedom advocates held very different views on President Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during last year's election, as the Deseret News previously reported, and why some faith groups support a push to limit the application of a landmark religious freedom law.
More liberal advocates generally believe religious liberty protections work best when they're balanced with other types of protections, including LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, while more conservative advocates generally say religious freedom should win out.
If you dig into the justices' track record on religion over the 20 years Chief Justice John Roberts has led the court, you'll find several rulings that reflect this tension.
Among other issues, the court has split along ideological lines in cases involving school prayer, state funding for religious schools and the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate.
In these decisions and others, the court's conservative majority embraced a broad interpretation of religious exercise protections, while the court's more liberal justices called for limitations on religious freedom in their dissents.
These split decisions are often what people think of when they think of the Supreme Court and religion — but they're actually the exception, not the rule.
From Roberts' confirmation in September 2005 to April 2021, religious freedom claims succeeded in front of the Supreme Court 13 times. Nine of those 13 rulings were either unanimous or from a mixed 7-2 majority, according to a Deseret News analysis from 2021.
In the four years since that analysis was released, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religion claims in merits cases seven more times. Four of the decisions were unanimous, while a fifth was 8-1.
In other words, the justices are finding ways to bridge the gap between conservative and liberal takes on religious freedom, including in cases involving LGBTQ rights.
When you consider the court's record on religion, Thursday's unanimous ruling no longer seems surprising.
But it might still feel worth celebrating, especially if you're worried about the state of the religious freedom landscape.
Before the Supreme Court enters its summer recess in early July, the justices will have one more opportunity to model consensus-building in a religious freedom case.
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court is considering whether the First Amendment gives religious parents a right to opt their kids out of reading or hearing books about LGBTQ issues.
During oral arguments in April, the court appeared divided along ideological lines, as the Deseret News reported at the time.
More liberal justices seemed to support the school district, which said that religious freedom protects you from being coerced into changing your beliefs, not from being exposed to other ideas. More conservative justices seemed to support the families, who felt like their religious teachings were being drowned out.
It wasn't immediately clear what a compromise ruling would look like. But even as Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked tough questions of the school district's attorney, he reminded everyone to keep searching.
'The whole goal, I think, of some of our religion precedents is to look for the win/win,' he said.
