On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Catholic charity organization based in Wisconsin regarding a case that involved unemployment tax credits for religious institutions. This decision represents a victory for faith-based organizations, which contended that the state’s ruling infringed upon the religious clauses of the First Amendment.
The justices of the high court reached a unanimous conclusion that the state had engaged in an “unnecessary entanglement” by attempting to ascertain whether religious groups could qualify for a tax exemption that would otherwise be available, contingent upon the state’s religious conduct stipulations, as reported by Fox News.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the majority, stated, “When the government differentiates between religions based on theological distinctions in their service provision, it enforces a denominational preference that must meet the highest standard of judicial scrutiny.”
Sotomayor further remarked, “Since Wisconsin has violated that principle without the necessary adjustments to withstand such scrutiny, the ruling of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is overturned, and the case is sent back for further proceedings that are consistent with this opinion.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court had earlier determined that the Catholic Charities organization in question was not “operated primarily for religious purposes,” as it serves and employs individuals who are not Catholic, and does not “attempt to instill program participants with the Catholic faith.”
Recently, the nation’s highest court garnered attention by delivering a significant victory to the Trump administration.
On Friday, the Supreme Court permitted Trump’s administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua residing in the United States, thereby endorsing the Republican president’s initiative to escalate deportations.
The court suspended the order issued by Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, which had halted the administration’s effort to terminate the immigration “parole” that had been granted to 532,000 of these migrants by former President Joe Biden, potentially putting many of them at risk of immediate removal while the case is adjudicated in lower courts.
The ruling was unsigned and did not provide justification, which is typical for emergency court orders. According to CNN, two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, formally dissented.
Immigration parole is a form of temporary authorization provided by U.S. law that allows entry into the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” enabling grantees to reside and work in the United States. Biden, a Democrat, incorporated parole into his administration’s strategy aimed at deterring illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On January 20, the first day of his return to office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at abolishing humanitarian parole programs. Subsequently, in March, the Department of Homeland Security sought to end these programs by reducing the duration of the two-year parole grants. The administration asserted that revoking parole would facilitate the placement of migrants into an ‘expedited removal’ process.
This lawsuit is among numerous actions that the Trump administration has urgently pursued in the nation’s highest court, aiming to reverse decisions made by lower courts that obstruct his extensive initiatives, particularly those related to immigration.
On May 19, the Supreme Court permitted Trump to rescind a deportation protection known as temporary protected status, which had been extended by Biden to approximately 350,000 Venezuelans residing in the United States while the legal dispute was ongoing.
In an effort to reduce illegal border crossings, Biden declared in 2022 that Venezuelans arriving in the United States by air could be granted a two-year parole, contingent upon passing security checks and having a financial sponsor in the U.S.
In 2023, Biden broadened this policy to encompass Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans as his administration confronted significant levels of illegal immigration from these nations.
The plaintiffs, consisting of a group of paroled migrants along with their American sponsors, initiated a lawsuit against administration officials, claiming that they breached federal laws governing the actions of government agencies.
In April, Judge Talwani ruled that the statute governing such parole did not permit the program’s indiscriminate termination, but instead mandated an individual assessment for each case.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Boston, chose not to suspend the judge’s ruling.
In its submission, the Justice Department notified the Supreme Court that Talwani’s ruling had nullified “essential immigration policies that are meticulously designed to discourage illegal entry,” effectively “reversing democratically sanctioned policies that were prominently featured in the November election” which led to Trump’s return to the presidency.
