Religious Liberty and the Supreme Court
2025 Annual Report of the Committee on Religious Liberty
Section V
Section V: Religious Liberty and the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court did not decide any cases in 2024 that dealt primarily with a question of religious liberty. However, rights of conscience played an unexpectedly key role in two decisions about abortion, and the Court reined in the power of federal agencies to interpret laws passed by Congress, signaling a major change in how regulations and religious liberty will intersect in the future. Meanwhile, the Court heard arguments in a blockbuster case with far-reaching implications for religious liberty, regarding whether the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits gender identity discrimination.
Rulings
Conscience Rights in Abortion Cases
In June of 2024, the Supreme Court issued rulings in two cases about abortion. In Moyle v. United States, Idaho challenged guidance issued by HHS that seemed to construe the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to require hospitals to perform abortions in emergency scenarios, inconsistent with Idaho’s law restricting abortions in the state.[42] Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sought to reverse the Food & Drug Administration’s loosening of requirements for the prescription of mifepristone, a chemical abortion drug.[43]
In both cases, the federal government argued that federal conscience statutes provide robust protection for both religious hospitals and religious health care workers, so they could not be required to perform abortions—either in emergency scenarios, in Moyle, or as a result of complications from mifepristone, in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. And in both cases, the Supreme Court relied on these representations from the federal government to dismiss the challenges.[44]
Considering that HHS had, earlier in 2024, issued a revised Conscience Rule that declined to construe the terms of the federal conscience statutes, the breadth of the federal government’s understanding of their protections expressed in oral arguments was encouraging. For example, the Solicitor General said that, because of the conscience statutes, EMTALA could not require a doctor to perform an emergency abortion even if no other doctor were available. In its rulemaking process on the Conscience Rule, HHS had studiously avoided suggesting such an absolute, bright-line rule.[45]
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (U.S. No. 22-451)
As discussed earlier in this report, it is regulations issued by federal agencies, much more so than laws passed by Congress, that have threatened religious liberty in recent years. While the balance of power between the judiciary and executive branches naturally implicates issues other than religious freedom, if federal agencies’ authority to interpret the law is significantly limited, religious freedom problems created by federal regulation will likely diminish.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the case that established Chevron deference, a legal doctrine that directs courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws passed by Congress.[46] Rather than defer to federal agencies, the Court said, courts must independently interpret the laws passed by Congress.
While enhanced judicial constraints on regulatory overreach will benefit religious liberty in the long run, a quirk of timing makes Loper Bright a double-edged sword. In the event the incoming Trump administration seeks to revise and replace problematic regulations issued under the Biden administration, litigants will attempt to use Loper Bright to challenge those rulemakings.
Oral Arguments
U.S. v. Skrmetti (U.S. No. 23-477)
Tennessee, like 23 other states, passed a law prohibiting the performance of gender transition interventions on children. The federal government sued, arguing that the law constitutes sex-based discrimination that is prohibited under the Equal Protection Clause. The Sixth Circuit upheld the law, finding that it draws no impermissible distinctions among classes of people, but rather treats similarly situated individuals similarly. The Supreme Court took the case, holding oral arguments in December.
Historically, in conflicts between religious liberty and gender ideology, religious liberty has generally had the advantage of being a right secured in the Constitution, whereas rights associated with the concept of gender identity have been creations of statute. A ruling against Tennessee in Skrmetti could upend that dynamic by establishing a constitutional presumption that the teachings of the Catholic Church on this issue are bigoted.
Based on the justices’ questioning at oral arguments, most observers concluded that a majority of the Court would likely uphold Tennessee’s law. However, Justice Gorsuch—the author of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that Title VII, a federal employment nondiscrimination statute, prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination—was notably silent.
Grants and Denials of Certiorari
Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission (U.S. No. 24-154) (cert. granted)
The Catholic Charities agency of the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, applied for an exemption for religious employers from the state’s unemployment tax program, in order to participate instead in a church-run program that offers the same level of benefits. The state denied the application, concluding that Catholic Charities was not sufficiently religious, but rather merely a secular charity, because it employs and serves non-Catholics and does not try to convert those whom it serves. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the denial, under a standard that required Catholic Charities to prove the unconstitutionality of the denial “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The Supreme Court took the case to determine whether a state violates the First Amendment’s religion clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise-available tax exemption because the organization does not meet the state’s criteria for religious behavior.
Missouri Department of Corrections v. Finney (U.S. No. 23-203) (cert. denied)
Jean Finney sued her employer, the Missouri Department of Corrections, for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. During jury selection, her attorney asked potential jurors about their religious beliefs about homosexuality and moved to strike two jurors who expressed traditional beliefs. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the jurors’ exclusion, reasoning that their beliefs were a sound basis for concluding that they could not impartially serve on the jury.
While agreeing with the Court’s denial of certiorari on technical grounds, Justice Alito wrote that the Missouri Supreme Court’s reasoning “exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges, namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government. The opinion of the Court in that case made it clear that the decision should not be used in that way, but I am afraid that this admonition is not being heeded by our society.”[47]
[42] Moyle v. United States, 603 U.S. 324, (2024).
[43] Food & Drug Admin. v. All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367 (2024).
[44] Moyle, 603 U.S. at 335, 337-338; Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. at 386-390.
[45] Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. at 388.
[46] Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024); Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984).
[47] Missouri Dep’t of Corr. v. Finney, 218 L. Ed. 2d 69 (Feb. 20, 2024).