The Old Line State’s highest court is handing Catholics a legal win, but by a narrow margin. The Maryland Supreme Court ruled last week that religious exemption clauses in the state’s employment laws protect religious institutions against claims of “religious, sexual orientation, and gender identity discrimination.” The Court clarified that the legal ban on discrimination on the basis of sex or gender identity does not apply to sexual orientation.

The decision was handed down in the Doe v. Catholic Relief Services case. Headquartered in Baltimore, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the international humanitarian aid arm of the U.S. Catholic bishops, ministering to over 130 million people in over 100 countries and providing assistance especially in the wake of natural disasters or wars. In 2020, a CRS employee (the eponymous “Doe,” a data analyst) sued CRS after the Catholic organization refused to provide health benefits to his “husband.” In keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church, CRS holds that marriage is between one man and one woman.

Last year, a federal judge ruled in favor of Doe, ordering CRS to offer health care benefits to the “spouses” of gay or lesbian employees. U.S. District Court judge Catherine Blake explained her decision saying, “This case concerns a social service organization’s employment benefit decisions regarding a data analyst and does not involve CRS’[s] spiritual or ministerial functions.” But CRS argued that because it is a fundamentally religious institution, Doe by default “is involved in its activities.”

Seeking further clarity regarding the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act (MFEPA), Blake instructed the state’s Supreme Court to consider and respond to a series of questions regarding the legislation, specifically whether the religious exemption therein applied to the situation at hand. According to a legal summary, the Court found that:

(1) the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex in MFEPA does not itself also prohibit sexual orientation discrimination, which is separately covered under MFEPA; (2) [the Maryland Equal Pay for Equal Work Act] does not prohibit sexual orientation discrimination; and (3) MFEPA’s religious entity exemption applies with respect to claims by employees who perform duties that directly further the core mission of the religious entity. (RELATED: Church, Inc. Will Always Fail)

According to the Court, because Maryland employment and discrimination law differentiates between sex and sexual orientation, instead of classifying the two together, religious exemption rules that wouldn’t apply to discrimination on the basis of sex do permit religious institutions to adhere to their teachings on sexual orientation. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Jonathan Biran further clarified that the Maryland state legislature’s refusal to include sexual orientation as a protected category in religious exemption clauses could not have been a mere oversight.

Maryland has a rich Catholic history, which neither the Court nor even the increasingly-left-wing legislature has quite forgotten yet. Fleeing protestant persecution in their home country, many English Catholics settled in Maryland in the early-to-mid 1600s, naming their first city (St. Mary’s City) after the Blessed Virgin Mary. The colony’s first proprietor, Lord Baltimore, sought to make Maryland a safe haven for Catholics fleeing persecution in protestant-dominated areas, both in Europe and in the New World.

Baltimore was also the site of America’s first Catholic diocese, the diocese of Baltimore, which was established by Pope Pius VI in 1789 with John Carroll (brother of Charles, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence) as its first bishop. From Baltimore, all the other dioceses of the U.S. later sprang, starting with Boston, New York, and Philadelphia in 1808. Baltimore is also home to America’s first cathedral. (RELATED: Churches Still Haven’t Recovered From Pandemic Anti-Christian Discrimination)

Despite the state’s historical Catholic roots, the faith has waned as of late. Once boasting one of the highest concentrations of Catholics, only about 15 percent of Maryland’s population identify as Catholic, which is lower than the national average of 20 percent. Policies and politics antithetical to once-firmly-entrenched Catholic teaching have become the state’s norm, such as almost unrestricted access to abortion and rampant LGBT ideology.

It may be heartening to think that even in the midst of increasing leftism, Maryland’s Supreme Court still chose to uphold one of the most fundamental of all liberties, the freedom to follow one’s faith. But the decision was won by a frighteningly narrow margin (4-3) and should, if anything, indicate to Catholics and, indeed, to Christians of all stripes, that unless we reject the nihilistic, amoral liberalism that has quickly become the left’s dogma and begin practicing our faith in earnest, even that fundamental liberty may soon be stripped away from us — and this time, there’s no New World to flee to from persecution.