“Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” As we hit the midpoint of Lent, Matthew 25:40 is a perfect reminder of the call to Catholics to perform corporal works of mercy.

Interestingly enough, the “charitable actions by which we help our neighbors in their bodily needs” — as they are defined in the Catechism — are also at the center of a case before the Supreme Court in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission. Oral argument before the Court begins this coming Monday.

Consistent with its obligations under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, Wisconsin, like other states, has an unemployment insurance program that offers financial assistance for people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. The state exempts certain non-profits that offer their own unemployment coverage, including religious organizations, from having to pay into the program. There is a bit of a catch, however. To qualify for an exemption in Wisconsin, a religious organization must establish that it is “operated primarily for religious purposes and operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches.”

Enter Catholic Charities Bureau, an incorporated ministry of the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, that has operated since 1917 to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” The group is directly controlled by the bishop of Superior. In a recent commentary for the Register, Alan Rock, executive director of Catholic Charities Bureau, shares moving details of this “dynamic ministry serving 60 communities across Wisconsin, from the shores of Lake Superior to the heart of the state’s rolling landscapes.” 

Back in 1972, Wisconsin’s Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations ruled that Catholic Charities did not qualify for an exemption. The department pointed to paperwork that described the organization’s work as “charitable,” “educational” and “rehabilitative,” rather than “religious.”

In 2004, Catholic Charities sought an exemption from the state’s system and was denied. But in 2015, a state court ruled that an affiliate of Catholic Charities qualified for an exemption. This prompted Catholic Charities and four other affiliated charities to seek an exemption with the Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission anew. (Side note: Catholic Charities planned to enroll in the Wisconsin Bishops’ Church Unemployment Pay Program — a more efficient unemployment compensation program that provides the same benefits as the state’s program.) After the Commission rejected its request for an exemption, Catholic Charities went to court.

Last year, a majority of the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the Commission’s decision. The court’s 50-page majority opinion reflects an unduly narrow view of what sort of activities are “religious in nature.” Catholic Charities “neither attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees,” observed the majority. The court downplayed the religious motivation in setting up Catholic Charities and the religious character of its work, likening it to that done by any other philanthropic endeavor.

Catholic Charities, represented by the religious freedom powerhouse Becket, successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Catholic Charities’ brief to the Court begins by explaining that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment “work in tandem to protect a sphere of autonomy for religious organizations, to prevent entanglement of church and state, and to prohibit government discrimination among religious organizations.” Wisconsin’s refusal to grant Catholic Charities an exemption, it explains, is “unconstitutional in at least three ways.”

First, Wisconsin has failed to respect Church autonomy by penalizing the choice to incorporate Catholic Charities separately. Issues of Church governance, explains the brief, should not be second-guessed by government officials.

Second, the refusal involves an impermissible entanglement of the government in assessing whether certain activities are “religious.”

And third, denying an exemption to Catholic Charities while granting one to groups that proselytize or those that serve only those within their own faith tradition discriminates among religions.

Wisconsin’s response reveals how profoundly the secularist mindset afflicts many government officials today. It claims that “religious purposes” describes only “distinctively religious” activities such as “worship, ritual, teaching the faith, or spreading a religious message.”

Secularists have begun to line up to offer their two cents. An opinion piece for the tediously progressive online magazine Vox, for example, begins by maligning the Supreme Court. “The Court’s Republican majority almost always rules in favor of Christian litigants who seek an exemption from a federal or state law,” writes senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. And even though Millhiser acknowledges that “no matter who prevails before the Supreme Court, unemployed former employees of Catholic Charities will still receive similar benefits,” he concludes with a wild prediction: “If the Court grants this exemption, the justices could give many employers a broad new power to evade laws governing the workplace.”

The truth is that Catholic and other faith-based organizations have taken the opportunity to teach about how the faith is “lived” in a myriad of contexts. Religiously-affiliated colleges and universities, for example, are an important expression of the mission of the Church. Religious orders similarly offer “humanitarian” and other types of aid as an integral expression of their religious charism. These activities reflect the fundamental teaching that acts of Christian charity are indispensable expressions of the faith itself.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the Trump administration has provided a crucial amicus brief on behalf of the United States with the Court in support of Catholic Charities. Wisconsin’s religious exemption is identical to that found in the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, so the government’s interpretation of the exemption is important. Courts must consider whether “the organization actually operates primarily for religious reasons, not whether another organization could undertake the same activities for nonreligious reasons.” The administration also condemned Wisconsin’s refusal to grant an exemption as intervening with the guarantees of the First Amendment. After four years of federal warfare on religious groups and people, it’s refreshing to see the Trump administration contributing to the Court’s review.

The Supreme Court’s review of this case should be fairly straightforward. A bigger challenge will be to remind many people who no longer have a connection to religion that good works are a feature of the faith.