Unanimous Win for Christian Charity at the U.S. Supreme Court

In breaking news, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of a Christian charity in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court had ruled the charity should lose its tax-exempt status because serving the poor isn’t really a “typical” religious activity. Really? I guess the state justices forgot what the Bible teaches about taking care of the poor.

The ACLJ had filed an amicus brief in this major religious liberty case, arguing the case on free speech grounds. The First Amendment protects multiple rights, including free speech, freedom of the press, freedom from religious establishments, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

And right up front, the First Amendment protects “the free exercise” of religion. This provision is called the Free Exercise Clause.

Historically, the exercise of free speech and freedom of religion often overlap. For example, someone passing out leaflets may be evangelizing. An expressive gathering may be for prayer, worship, or revival.

That’s why interpreting the First Amendment requires that you know what “the freedom of speech” or “the free exercise [of religion]” meant to those who drafted and adopted that amendment. And, as we document in our brief, both far-Left and conservative Justices have invoked the “history-and-tradition” test when interpreting a wide variety of constitutional clauses, including other clauses of the First Amendment (namely, free speech, petition, and establishment of religion).

So we argued in our amicus brief that the Free Exercise Clause should not be treated in a lesser manner. We urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this egregious state Supreme Court ruling.

My dad, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, weighed in on the Christian charity’s major victory:

It’s a huge win because it was unanimous. So anytime you have a religion case that’s unanimous, that’s a good thing. . . . We’ve been litigating for several years this whole issue of treating religious institutions differently than other groups when it comes to getting various government benefits. Here, it was a tax credit for religious institutions. Now they were denied their credit simply because they were a Christian charity and that their view of how this work would be violating the Establishment Clause. Well, the Supreme Court, in that opinion by Justice Sotomayor, unanimously concluded that when the government distinguishes among religions based on theological differences in their provision of services, it imposes denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny, which this law did not. And so it was targeted.

It’s very much in the line of cases that we’ve argued going back to Lamb’s Chapel in the 1990s, where religious institutions were treated differently for access to public schools than every other group. We won that unanimously. So [today’s decision is] a major victory. It’s a real advance for the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause.

We are proud to see that our amicus brief helped secure a 9-0 decision at the Supreme Court. It is a major victory, and we will continue to fight other religious liberty cases nationwide.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included a full analysis of the Trump Administration launching an investigation into President Biden’s use of an autopen. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted to Chinese bioterrorists threatening the U.S. Also, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell commented on Iran rejecting the proposed U.S. nuclear deal.

Watch the full broadcast below: