This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative majority will have three more chances to undermine church-state separation. Public education, workers’ protections and LGBTQ+ equality are at risk as well.
After a one-year hiatus in which the court didn’t have any cases with direct ties to religion on its docket, the justices will hear three religious freedom cases within just over a month. Here’s a look at those cases and the impact they could have.
Catholic Charities Bureau Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission
On March 31 (after this issue of Church & State went to press), the court was scheduled to hear arguments in this case that could result in more employers claiming religious exemptions from laws meant to protect workers.
Wisconsin set up the country’s first unemployment insurance system nearly a century ago to provide a safety net for workers in case they lose their jobs. Employers fund the program, but the state included a narrow exemption for organizations operating “primarily for religious purposes.”
Black River Industries, Diversified Services, Headwaters, and Barron County Developmental Services — subsidiaries of Catholic Charities — paid into Wisconsin’s unemployment system for decades to protect their workers. Identifying their work as “charitable,” “educational” and “rehabilitative” rather than “religious,” these sub-entities provide secular services such as job placement and other training, primarily for people with developmental disabilities.
But in 2015, these employers changed course and demanded that they be exempt from contributing to the unemployment insurance system. They sued, and the case went before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which in 2024 ruled that the subsidiaries’ charitable work was secular in nature and their employees therefore deserved the unemployment protections that are available to most workers in Wisconsin.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Christian Nationalist legal group that represents Catholic Charities and its subsidiaries, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Becket was the group behind previous Supreme Court cases that resulted in religious employers being able to call a broader swath of employees “ministers” so they aren’t protected by civil rights laws; employers and universities citing religious beliefs to deny workers and students access to birth control; and a taxpayer-funded foster care agency in Philadelphia continuing to discriminate against prospective LGBTQ+ parents.
Americans United, joined by seven religious and civil rights organizations, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Wisconsin case, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision. The brief warns that if the justices adopt the Becket Fund’s rationale, any employer that claims a religious motivation could exempt itself from laws protecting workers, civil rights and much more — all with no objective review from courts. A likely outcome would be that legislators would repeal religious exemptions written into such laws to prevent an explosion in the number of entities exempted and the systems that protect employees from collapsing.
“This case is part of a dangerous trend,” warned AU President and CEO Rachel Laser. “Christian Nationalist legal groups want employers who claim a religious motive to be able to sidestep worker protection requirements without any court review of the claim. The employer might work in a secular business, operate in a secular way, receive government funding, and hire people of all religions and none, but still be exempt from important safeguards on religious grounds.
“If the Christian Nationalists succeed, the mere invocation of religious beliefs would be allowed to erase important social safety nets and worker and civil rights protections,” Laser said.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Becket Fund also is behind the next religion case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on April 22. This case involves religiously conservative parents who want to be able to opt out their children from reading books in public schools that include LGBTQ+ characters.
The case originated in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. The district is within the metro Washington, D.C., area and is Maryland’s largest, serving more than 160,000 students.
For its language-arts curriculum, the district approved a handful of books that include LGBTQ+ characters. The books, which passed a participatory selection process, were chosen because they support critical reading skills through engaging, age-appropriate stories.
The school district initially allowed parents with religious objections to excuse their children from reading the books, but district officials decided the opt-outs were too disruptive and harmful to other students.
Becket sued on the anti-LGBTQ+ parents’ behalf. So far, federal courts have ruled in the school district’s favor, finding that a public school curriculum that simply introduces children to differing views doesn’t constitute a religious freedom violation.
On Americans United’s “Wall of Separation” blog, Senior Adviser Rob Boston noted how this is really an underhanded attempt to strike from public schools books that do not align with Christian Nationalist views.
“Rather than deal with constant demands for opt-outs, some schools may decide to remove any material that they conclude might offend certain parents.” Boston wrote. “This dumbing down of the curriculum would force all students to live under the religious rules of the minority.”
Boston noted how religious exemptions from public school curriculum could balloon out of control: “Some religious groups, for example, believe women should submit to men and might demand opt-outs any time a book is used that shows women in positions of authority. Fundamentalist Christians often object to the teaching of evolution in science classes, but allowing their children to opt out would be impractical. (It would also do a disservice to the kids. Students who haven’t learned modern science will struggle when they attend science classes at secular universities.)”
Americans United intends to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case in early April.
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond
The Supreme Court saved for the end of the term the issue in which Americans United has been the most deeply involved: whether Oklahoma can allow St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to become the nation’s first religious public charter school.
AU and allies filed the first lawsuit challenging the creation and public funding of St. Isidore back in July 2023 on behalf of Oklahoma faith leaders, public school parents and public education advocates. These Oklahomans object to their tax dollars funding a public school that will indoctrinate students in one religion, will discriminate against students and employees based on their religion and LGBTQ+ status, and won’t commit to adequately serving students with disabilities. Joining AU as co-counsel in the case are the American Civil Liberties Union, Education Law Center and Freedom From Religion Foundation.
While AU’s case was pending, Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a separate lawsuit also challenging the school as a violation of Oklahomans’ religious freedom. Drummond’s case was filed directly before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which in June 2024 agreed with Drummond and AU that a public religious charter school was unlawful and unconstitutional.
But the school and the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, represented by Christian Nationalist legal organizations including Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty Institute and the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.
Notre Dame’s involvement with St. Isidore is believed to be the reason Justice Amy Coney Barrett announced her recusal from the case. Barrett, a Notre Dame Law School alum and former professor, is reportedly friends with Notre Dame law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, an early adviser to St. Isidore. Not only did their tenures at Notre Dame overlap, but they also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justices at the same time — Barrett for Justice Antonin Scalia and Garnett for Justice Clarence Thomas.
It’s unclear what Barrett’s recusal will mean for the case’s outcome. If the justices end up divided in a 4-4 tie, the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that St. Isidore is unconstitutional will stand.
When the court announced in January it would hear the case, AU and its co-counsel groups in the other St. Isidore case issued a statement urging the court to protect public education and religious freedom: “The law is clear: Charter schools are public schools and must be secular and open to all students. The Oklahoma Supreme Court correctly found that the state’s approval of a religious public charter school was unlawful and unconstitutional.
“Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to fund a religious public school that plans to discriminate against students and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion,” the statement continued. “Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy.”
Transgender rights cases
Earlier in this Supreme Court term, Americans United also weighed in on the case U.S. v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender adolescents. AU views the case as having religious freedom and church-state separation implications because, at their core, anti-trans policies impose a narrow religious view about gender on everyone. Christian Nationalists have repeatedly made that clear, from President Donald Trump’s Project 2025-inspired anti-trans orders to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) citing the Bible to justify a trans sports ban.
AU joined civil rights organizations and Kentucky parents of transgender children in a friend-of-the-court brief in the Skrmetti case last fall. The brief argues that the bans in Tennessee and Kentucky, like those passed in other states, intentionally discriminate against transgender youth by denying them medications that are prescribed for other youth. These laws do not ban the medications for cis (non-trans) people; the bans only apply to transgender people. As a result of this discriminatory treatment, transgender youth are unable to obtain the only effective treatment for the severe distress caused by gender dysphoria.
“If America is to make good on its promises of freedom without favor and equality without exception, families and their doctors, not politicians, must be able to make health care decisions for transgender youth,” AU’s Laser said at the time.
The Skrmetti case was argued in December; the court’s decisions in it and the other three cases mentioned here are expected by the end of June.
Anti-trans religious views also play into the next LGBTQ+ rights case the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear next fall. Chiles v. Salazar is a challenge to Colorado’s ban on the harmful and discredited practice of conversion therapy, which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
A Christian counselor, backed by the anti-LGBTQ+ Christian Nationalist group Alliance Defending Freedom, claims Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates her freedom of speech to discuss with patients her view that “clients can accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.”
According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 20 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have enacted laws banning or restricting conversion therapy, which has been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization for decades. HRC notes children are especially vulnerable to conversion therapy’s risks of depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness and suicide.
Americans United will be monitoring all of these cases and is prepared to continue defending church-state separation and the rights and freedoms that depend on it, regardless of the outcomes.
“We are bracing ourselves for more rulings in lockstep with the white Christian Nationalist agenda that is becoming more clear to more Americans every day,” Laser told CNN last fall as the new Supreme Court term was beginning. “When the Roberts court rules on religion, it’s almost always coming down in support of not just religion, but of mainstream Christian interests.”