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Justices could reshape religious liberty

Supreme Court to decide cases on education, taxes

By: BrieAnne J. Frank
USA Today

..... The U.S. Supreme Court's May 22 [2025] deadlock prevented the establishment of the nation's first religious charter school.
...... A decision allowing such an institution would have dramatically overhauled long-standing norms about public education and religious freedom in the United States.
..... But decisions in tow the cases centered on religion and the First Amendment are still ahead, and experts say those too, could reshape what religious liberty means across the nation.
..... The cases - one dealing with public school curriculum and the other with tax exemptions for religious organizations - are "very significant" for different reason, but are coming before justices amid a broader trend of the court intervening to protect the free exercise of religion, said Daniel Cinkle, a professor of law emeritus at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law.
..... Plus, there's been an "almost complete ideological switch on the court" in recent years, said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law emeritus at the UCLA School of Law. He and other experts attributed the shift to a conservative-majority the currently includes three Trump appointees.
..... The court now tends to have a "very minimalist view of he establishment clause and a very robust view of the free exercise clause," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor and deal of Berkley Law.
..... In the First Amendment, one clause prohibits the government for establishing a religion and the other bans the government form interfering with citizens' free practice of religion as long as, according to a federal court analysis, "the practice does not run afoul of 'public morals' or a 'compelling' governmental interest."
..... The court's decisions in the remaining religious liberty cases will indicate whether that trend will continue.

Parents seek to 'opt out' kids

..... The school case surrounds parents' objections in Maryland to books with LGBTQ+ characters that Montgomery county Public Schools, which is based in the Washington metro area, added to its curriculum in 2022.
..... Though the district initially accommodated parents who did not want their childminder to be exposed to such materials, it later prohibited the opt-outs. Parents sued the district, lost their case and ultimate appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in April. [2025]
..... A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the parents could open the floodgates to countless other religious objection to public education materials, which Duke law professor Richard Katskee said stands to be "incredibly disruptive."
..... "Anybody who's run a school knows you can't provide individualize, tailored instruction to every kid based on that kid's parents' religious viewpoints," Katskee said.
.....There would also be logistical questions to address, including who's responsible for supervising students if they are made to leave their classroom during certain lessons and how to select alternative materials that is inoffensive to their parents.
..... Conkle pointed to the Supreme Court;s 1972 ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder, which found that a state law requiring Amish parents to send their children to public school until at least the age of 16 violated the parents' free exercise right.
..... though the Maryland case also revolves around the extent to which religious parents can shape their children's education, Conkle said a decision in favor of the parents could cerate a "significantly different and greater administrative burden" than the ruling in Yoder did.
..... There would be a greater risk of "administrate headaches" in granting parents the right to opt their children out of any element of public school curriculum they find objectionable, he said, than there is in allowing them to simply opt out of the public school system altogether.
..... "Can public schools really function in that kind of cafeteria-line way?" Chemerinsky said.

Tax case 'quite important'

..... The tax exemption case centers on whether a Catholic charity operated by a diocese in Wisconsin is required to contribute to the state's unemployment system.
..... The state's supreme court previously ruled that Catholic charities, operated by the Diocese of Superior in northwest Wisconsin, was not exempt from paying an unemployment tax like the larger Catholic Church is.
..... Religious organizations do not have to pay such taxes, but the state found the charity's work was too secular in nature to warrant a similar exemption.
..... The issues is "conceptually quite important," Volokh said, thought its application would depend on states' tax rules and may not have implication as far-reaching as the Maryland case.
..... Most states, however, have laws similar to Wisconsin's that exempt church-controlled organizations "operated primarily for religious purposes," from contributing to unemployment programs, USA Today previously reported.
..... The extent to which the charity's work could be considered religious was debated among the justices during oral arguments in March. [2025]
..... Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the law appears to emphasize "why they do it, not what they do," while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said what matters is actions, not intentions.

Impact of rulings

..... Meanwhile, experts agreed the court's deadlock in the Oklahoma case leaves room for the question of religious charter schools to return to the court's docket in the future.
..... Chemerinsky said it is "hard to overstate the importance of this issue," which epitomizes the court;s shift to a wider application of the free exercise clause.
..... "when the issue comes back to the court, it will all spend on Justice Barrett;s views," he said, referencing Amy Coney Barrett's recusal from the case.
..... But when it comes to the two other religion cases currently before the court, experts said their impact will ultimately depend on how the rulings are written.
..... "The broader the rulings, the more destructive the are to public education and to religious freedom for us all," Katskee said.

..... Contributing: Maureen Groppa, USA Today
..... USA today's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

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