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The court, which has been receptive to claims from religious groups, particularly Christian ones, will hear three major cases in the coming weeks.
March 30, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
It has been almost three years since the Supreme Court last heard arguments in a case that turned on one of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, a curious lull in what had been a signature project for the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: to bolster the place of faith in public life.
The hiatus is over. In the space of a month this spring, the court will hear three important religion cases. The first one, to be argued Monday, asks whether a Catholic charity in Wisconsin should receive a tax exemption. In April, the court will consider whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma is constitutional and whether parents with religious objections to the curriculum in Maryland schools may withdraw their children from classes.
Taken together, the three cases will test the limits of the court’s assertive vision of religious liberty, which has been one of its distinctive commitments for more than a decade.
Since 2012, when the court unanimously ruled that religious groups were often exempt from employment discrimination laws, the pro-religion side has won all but one of the 16 signed decisions in argued cases that concerned the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion and its protection of the free exercise of religion.
“Religious liberty has been on a winning streak at the Supreme Court since 2012,” said Eric Rassbach, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the plaintiffs in two of the three cases to be argued this spring. “It isn’t yet on par with freedom of speech, but it is getting a lot closer.”
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction with the general trend in remarks at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in September. Asked to identify “some of the big themes of the court’s religious liberty cases in recent years,” he said, “We’ve made, in my view, correct and important strides” in “recognizing the constitutional protection of religious equality and religious liberty.”
