CV NEWS FEED // The recent court decision in Wisconsin which ruled that Catholic Charities does not have a religious exemption from paying unemployment taxes infringes on religious freedom, according to a recent analysis.
Religious freedom expert Dr. Paul Marshall argued in an analysis for Religion Unplugged that the ruling “truncates” religion.
CatholicVote reported that the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied Catholic Charities’ request for exemption from the state’s unemployment insurance program on March 14. The court ruled that the charity, which operates under the authority of a Catholic diocese, is a primarily secular organization, not a primarily religious one.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court argued that calling Catholic Charities a “religious organization” would be acknowledging a self-defined status. According to the justices’ majority opinion, an examination of the motivations and activities of Catholic Charities demonstrated that it is not run primarily for religious purposes.
“Although the motivations of an organization certainly figure into the analysis … allowing self-definition to drive the exemption would open the exemption to a broad spectrum of organizations based entirely on a single assertion of religious motivation,” the ruling continued.
Marshall argued that the ruling is correct in stating that a court “cannot simply defer to any organization’s assertion that it is religious and must have its own criteria.”
“However, Justice Bradley further states that the services provided, such as those given by Catholic Charities, ‘would be the same regardless of the motivation of the provider,’” Marshall continued. “Since secular groups provide similar social services, she calls this ‘a strong indication’ that the Catholic group does not ‘operate primarily for religious purposes.’”
Marshall also argued that works of charity are not secular activities, but rather religious ones, another fact that the ruling overlooked.
He pointed out that Catholic Charities and the Church believe “that charity is as integral to its nature as liturgical worship and spreading the faith.”
Catholic Charities argued in the filing that the Church “practices charity as a fundamentally religious activity in which it both encounters Christ in those served and bears witness to the Gospel to the world. … For these reasons—not simply as a humanitarian act or means to proselytize or impose the faith on others—the church instructs bishops to perform charitable works.”
Marshall pointed out that the same belief is held by other Christians, as well as Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others from several different religions.
“For most of the world’s believers, ignoring charity or confining it to one’s own would be a violation of religion, as would restricting religion to worship,” he concluded.
